Research Excitement

The past few weeks I think I have regained my love for research, possibly because I finally managed to get down to doing actual lab work. My LC-MS method has been validated and the first samples analysed. I am finally on target in this respect. What have I learnt in the past few months, during good times and bad, but mostly bad. The project is yours. You have to work hard (sometimes with blinkers on) to get ahead and cannot depend on anyone else. But a positive outcome is that at the end of the day the satisfaction of seeing the job getting done is increased.

Tomorrow I will be heading off back home for my Christmas holidays a satisfied girl, and looking forward to relaxing, but also getting my head sorted in relation to my research and get a plan down for my project due to all the changes that have resulted lately. I am also excited about getting to work on a piece of new equipment that I hope to be using later on in my project and that has been received at my home Uni.

So thank you for following, and wishing you a Merry Christmas

ATWARM Meeting: November 2011

This week I attended my third ATWARM meeting. I have written about the previous two here and here. The first day was the typical QUESTOR meeting, with presentations about current and upcoming projects. We also had an interesting presentation by the Environmental Sustainability KTN, which was a new concept to me, and which I found really interesting. We also had the student council meeting, where the new President and Secretary were elected, and my position as student council President came to an end. Following the student council meeting I attended the Supervisory meeting as a representative of the student council. I always find attending the supervisory meeting beneficial, and I really wish that all students could be present (even if just as observers) at this meeting as I think it is a good idea to know what aspects are concerning the supervisory board and how we can work together.

This time apart from being the usual QUESTOR/ATWARM meeting it was also time for the mid-term report which is due regarding the ATWARM project for FP7. Therefore the research officer responsible for the project came over for the ATWARM part of the meeting and we had a day of meetings with him. After an introductory report, all the fellows had to give a short 7 minute presentation about their background, research activities and our aspirations. I really appreciated that this time we kept strictly to the time allotted, since some people tend to keep talking way over the allotted time, and as has happened at these meetings before, people who are to present towards the end have had their presentation truly shortened or alternatively even transferred to another day at the end of a long programme. This was followed by a meeting between all the fellows and the research officer. The research officer was certainly not what most of us were expecting. The thing which surprised me most was that he was not too obsessed with the rules and regulations, but was very flexible to hearing what we had to say. He understood that the most important aspect of the fellowship was that we get training and get our PhD rather than fulfilling the original plan to the letter.

Alas, after the wonderful two days we made our way back to Dublin, albeit not without an initial stop at the Belfast Christmas Market for an hour or so, until the planes, trains etc were due to leave, or alternatively for those who were staying the night to go to their next outing of the night. I look forward to our next meeting in May, where we should be heading to Cranfield, at our partner site there.