{"id":918,"date":"2020-09-07T08:09:56","date_gmt":"2020-09-07T08:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/?p=918"},"modified":"2020-09-07T08:09:56","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T08:09:56","slug":"madina-wane-research-postgraduate-department-of-life-sciences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/2020\/09\/07\/madina-wane-research-postgraduate-department-of-life-sciences\/","title":{"rendered":"Madina Wane, Research Postgraduate, Department of Life Sciences"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cI am grateful to community initiatives, including the African-Caribbean Research Collective\u00a0<\/span><\/b>and Black British in STEM<\/span><\/b>,<\/span><\/b>\u00a0that have connected me with many other Black students both at Imperial and beyond.\u201d<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

I have been at Imperial for eight years and I am now in the final stage of my PhD. I first came to Imperial as an undergraduate in 2012 and it feels strange to finish my time here away from peers and colleagues. However, during this time I have enjoyed having regular online catch ups with my research group<\/span>\u00a0and<\/span>\u00a0adapting to this new mode of working together. Being able to discuss our work has been a bit of a break from all the uncertainty.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a researcher\u00a0<\/span>specialis<\/span>ing<\/span>\u00a0in viral infections and respiratory disease, I have tried to use my skills to support better science communication during the outbreak. I have spent time answering questions from the public using a platform developed by the Federation of American Scientists. This helped me feel\u00a0<\/span>more informed about the situation.\u00a0<\/span>It\u00a0<\/span>was particularly helpful for discussing COVID-19 with friends and family and debunking some of the misinformation on the disease.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Alongside the pandemic, dealing with the many high-profile racist incidents in the last few months has been exhausting.\u00a0<\/span>I am grateful to community initiatives, including the African-Caribbean Research Collective<\/a> (<\/span>founded<\/span>\u00a0by Imperial PhD student, De-<\/span>Shaine<\/span>\u00a0Murray) and Black British in STEM<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>(<\/span>founded<\/span>\u00a0by Imperial alumnus,\u00a0<\/span>Kayisha<\/span>\u00a0Payne)<\/span>, that have connected me with many other Black students both at Imperial and beyond.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This has motivated me to continue working on initiatives to support equality at Imperial and I was recently able to share some of this work at an online conference\u00a0<\/span>organised<\/span>\u00a0by Dr Vahid\u00a0<\/span>Shahrezaei<\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Faculty of Natural Sciences<\/span><\/a>,<\/span>\u00a0and Laura Lane<\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Graduate School<\/span>.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Whil<\/span>e<\/span>\u00a0there is still much work need to achieve equality in our community, it is inspiring to see individuals fighting for change.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI am grateful to community initiatives, including the African-Caribbean Research Collective\u00a0and Black British in STEM,\u00a0that have connected me with many other Black students both at Imperial and beyond.\u201d\u00a0 I have been at Imperial for eight years and I am now in the final stage of my PhD. I first came to Imperial as an undergraduate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1226,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":920,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions\/920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}