Feels odd being back to being a scientist after my stint as a science journalist. I am missing the day-to-day focus rather than having lots of things left to do a at the end of the day, especially since my to do list has got very long with the 5 weeks away!
Today is my first day at Heriot-Watt. It feels good to finally be here and to start everything organised. Already bumped into lots of people and am feeling very welcomed. Looking forward to getting my office and lab set-up to feel properly settled in.
Feels odd being back to being a scientist after my stint as a science journalist. I am missing the day-to-day focus rather than having lots of things left to do a at the end of the day, especially since my to do list has got very long with the 5 weeks away!
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Exciting end to Media Fellowship with getting a front page article in the Scotland on Sunday. Has been a brilliant experience, I've learnt loads and hope that I can continue to be involved with science journalism in some
Am enjoying being up in Aberdeen for my last week as a science journalist. Not seen much more of the science festival other than the press rooms yet apart from a really good talk tonight by Michael Mosely. Have been really busy writing loads of stories and it is very interesting to observe how the press conferences work.
Both of the Scottish Crucible applications that I was involved in were awarded funding.
The announcement was made at the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 3rd September. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend but I was delighted to hear both these projects were funded. One is looking at ways of sampling and detecting a virus associated with hospital infections whereas the other is investigating how games can contribute to behaviour change adopting more sustainable environmental practices. Am looking forward to getting started on them sometime soon. Had a really interesting week at Stresa in Italy with 34 other early-career researchers from around Europe discussing water and interdisciplinarity.
There were lots of fascinating talks and I really enjoyed finding out about different aspects of water research. I was also able to join the writing group whose task it was to document the week and the interdisciplinarity discussions so look out for our paper on this topic which will hopefully be published soon. We're all meeting up in Oxford in a couple of weeks to finalise the paper and learn more about the writing process from Iain Patten. I've had a fascinating day at the Scotsman shadowing the news desk. I left before it was all finalised so it will be really interesting to see what tomorrows paper actually ends up like. More detail will be on the media fellowship blog soon!
I got my results of my PGCert assignments this week and was really pleased to have passed all of the courses so I can graduate from this course in November 2012. I got some excellent feedback and also some helpful advice for improving my teaching. I'll be starting teaching at Heriot-Watt in the autumn term on their MSc in Sustainability Engineering delivering part of the Foundation Enviromental Science course, so I'm sure everything that I've learnt over the last 18 months will be useful in planning and delivering my classes.
Despoina and I produced a paper looking at antibody immobilisation methods for Cryptosporidium, which
I've just accepted a new job at Heriot-Watt University in the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Biophysics and Bioengineering. I'll be transferring my Fellowship and then in 2015 I will start as a Lecturer. I'm really excited about the move. I already have several collaborations with people at Heriot-Watt and look forward to starting some exciting new projects. The security of a permanent position is also great news for growing my research group.
My Masters by Research student Despoina Gavriilidou has been offered a PhD position at Imperial. Congratulations and all the best to her! I'm sure she be very successful.
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AuthorI hold a Royal Academy of Engineering/EPSRC Felowship at the University of Edinburgh, with a focus on the detection of waterborne pathogens. Archives
January 2020
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