Postgraduate Research – Page 3 – The Bristol Doctoral College Blog

#BristolisGlobal: an event invitation

Posted on 20 July 201620 July 2016 by Doctoral College

Following the wake of June 24’s announcement of the EU Referendum result, many of us in the Higher Education world – academics, staff, postgraduate researchers alike – find ourselves today with more questions than answers. As the UK’s political landscape continues to shift and adjust to the outcome, so the socioeconomic landscape confronts a future that seems more uncertain than ever. These questions affect us not only as students and staff, but also as residents and citizens of the city of Bristol, and the UK. Many see the decision to leave as a threat and stand against globalisation and a globalised world. Importantly, this international vision is something that the University espouses, as well as the city of Bristol.

Last week the Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, delivered a talk in the Anson Rooms in a show of solidarity with the #WeAreInternational movement, a campaign that brings scholars together from across the globe in recognition and celebration of the diverse world of research, knowledge and academic life. While it is not known what impact the UK’s decision to leave the EU will have on us, it is clear that the decision to leave will have immediate, short-term and longer-term repercussions, at the University of Bristol. Despite our questions and our uncertainty, in the spirit of International Friendship Day, we’d like to take this opportunity to come together as a community and stand in support for a global, internationally cooperative and collaborative Bristol.

On Wednesday, July 27, we will host an open discussion from 5.30 to 6.30pm in the Seminar Room at Beacon House Study Centre. The Pro-Vice Chancellor International, Dr Erik Lithander, will attend to provide an update on current developments, respond to your questions, and engage with us as we work to find solutions. This is also an opportunity for the PGR community to voice their concerns and share constructive strategies they would like the University to engage with. Refreshments will be provided. Please register via eventbrite.

Over 1500 PGR students registered at Bristol are from outside the UK. As we face the uncertainty of the UK’s political landscape the Bristol Doctoral College remains committed to supporting all international students, partners and connections. Moving forward, we will continue to champion global research and to foster and support globally-minded researchers.

See you there!

Tried and Tested: Organising a PhD Symposium

Posted on 15 July 201615 July 2016 by Doctoral College

Rachel Harris is a postgraduate researcher in Neuroscience in the School of Clinical Sciences. She helped coordinate the Bath & Bristol Science Film Festival, and organised the Bristol Neuroscience Festival, and is an active supporter of the city’s Neuroscience-related activities. As part of our Tried & Tested campaign, she spoke to us about the benefits of organising a PhD symposium and what her experiences doing so have taught her. Check out more of her musings on her blog, and follow her on twitter at @NeuroRach.

Last year I helped organise the first GW4 Early Career Neuroscientist Day. I didn’t have any experience organising an academic event but I was keen to help bring together neuroscience PhDs and postdocs from a range of disciplines and universities.

There were many roles available, from selecting and contacting speakers to choosing a venue and drumming up sponsorship. I took up a role on the scientific committee along with a team comprising of members from the other GW4 Universities (Bath, Cardiff and Exeter). A huge number of abstracts were submitted and it was really interesting see what stood out from the pack when we were selecting talks. It’s definitely something I think about when I come to write abstracts now.

The team for this symposium were all really committed and we communicated by combination of emails, calls and face to face meetings. The programme was developed over several months and it was rewarding to hear about progress from other members of the committee and see the event come together.

On the day the committee helped prepare the venue and greet attendees and speakers. Members of the scientific committee also hosted scientific symposia which included introducing speakers, managing questions, and dealing with any technical issues!

Check out the highlights from the day on Storify.

I’d recommend getting involved in organising a symposium. It’s a great way to meet other people from within your university as well in other institutions. It didn’t take up a huge amount of my time, but I still felt like I’d helped shape a successful day.

As a result of working on this event I now manage Bristol Neuroscience social media and helped out with the Bristol Neuroscience Festival, so you never know where things will lead. I’m also looking forward to this year’s symposium as I know the effort that goes in to making it work.

GW4 Early Career Neuroscientists’ Day is looking for volunteers to help coordinate the 2016/17 event in Cardiff. Email you expression of interest to Catherine Brown (catherine.brown@bristol.ac.uk) by July 18^th.

The organisers behind the Careers Beyond Biomedical Research seminar series

Posted on 28 June 201618 July 2016 by Doctoral College

Sonam Gurung, postgraduate researcher in the School of Biochemistry, received the Outstanding Award for her work as co-organising the ‘Careers Beyond Biomedical Research’ seminar series in the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences. We spoke to her and her fellow organisers behind the successful series, Lea Hampton O’Neil, Sandra Berlau Neumann, Alice Fodder and Rachael Baker.

hp-slide-molecule — Cell slides from the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences

With a degree under your belt, while trying to navigate the postgraduate degree, looking into future careers and deciding whether to stay in academia or not seems particularly daunting. Three years ago, the Careers Beyond Biomedical Research (CBBR) seminar was created by a student, Laura Carney, to provide a platform for students to explore possible career options outside of academic research. Having had the opportunity to go to the seminars last year, we were all inspired to help when it came round to having a new committee.

With the help from the previous committee members, Anna Smith and Leila Thuma, we were quickly on our way. Prof Paul Martin was able to help us financially by getting in contact with the Wellcome Trust to ensure smooth running of the seminar series. Prof. George Banting and the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences very graciously also provided us with additional funding. Upon contact, Prof Patty Kuwabara and the heads of schools kindly offered their help to advertise the series to all the students across several faculties.

Organising the CBBR seminar was an amazing experience for all of us, as we had the full liberty to organise and curate the entire programme. As a team we were able to work together and push ourselves to come up with alternate career areas that would enable students to stay connected to science and still be able to use their degrees. This was also an eye-opening experience for us as we were amazed at the wide ranging opportunities available and how within even one field, this could be wide and varied. For this reason, we decided to invite several speakers who followed different career paths within a certain topic, which also gave us the opportunity to meet extremely interesting people from a wide range of careers.

Contacting speakers was often challenging, in particular having the courage to contact bigger names within the field. However, the positive and enthusiastic responses we got from the speakers added to our confidence. Most people were very happy to talk about their careers and help postgrads with their own. Most speakers had themselves come from a science background and therefore, understood the struggles students faced when thinking about the future.

hp-slide-collage — A collage of research images from the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences

We were truly impressed with the range of people who were interested in our events, from undergraduates to staff and from within Biomedical Sciences to Engineering and Chemistry. We felt we had given an opportunity to all the students to explore more career options, which was particularly evident during the smaller group sessions after the talks, where students got to talk with the speakers, ask questions and make contacts. Speaking to students after was always rewarding as many came out with new career ideas or how to go about following their dream one.

Organising CBBR has been a wonderful challenge which we hope helped the many hundreds of students who attended the events. The feedback, that the talks “reassured” or even “inspired” students to explore various career options, truly indicates to us that this was a worthwhile experience, which we hope will continue in the future.

Sonam received an Outstanding Award from Careers Service for her efforts in organising the seminar series. She is pictured above in the red dress.

Research without Borders: from the exhibitor’s stand, with Heide Busse

Posted on 13 June 201618 July 2016 by Doctoral College

On Monday 9 May the Bristol Doctoral College hosted the ‘Research without Borders‘ festival, a showcase of postgraduate research excellence with over 100 student exhibits. Heide Busse, a second-year PhD student in the School of Social and Community Medicine, spoke to us about her experience as an exhibitor. Her research is funded by The Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer), a UKCRC Public Health Research Centre of Excellence. Follow Heide on Twitter @HeideBusse.

On the 9^th of May, I swapped office and computer for an afternoon at @tBristol science centre, where I participated in the annual “Research without Borders” event. This event is organised by the University of Bristol and provides PhD students across the university an opportunity to showcase their work to other researchers, funders, university partners and charities with the overall aim to stimulate discussion and spark ideas.

It did sound like a good and fun opportunity to tell others about my research so I thought ‘why not, see how it goes’ – immediately followed by the thought ‘alright, but what actually works to make visitors come and have a chat to me and engage with my exhibition stand’?

Luckily, help was offered by the organising team for the event from Bristol Doctoral College in terms of how to think of interactive ways to present my research – and not to just bring along the last poster that was prepared for a scientific conference. For instance, we developed the idea to ask visitors to vote on an important research question of mine. That way, visitors could engage with my research and I could at the same time see what they thought about one of my research questions!

My PhD research looks more closely at the potential of mentoring as an intervention for young people in secondary schools. There are quite a few formal mentoring programmes offered to pupils but there is hardly any research in this area to suggest whether this actually works in helping to improve young people’s health, wellbeing or educational outcomes. To provide information for different audiences, I also brought a scientific poster along, as well as leaflets about my work and the work of The Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer), a UKCRC Public Health Research Centre of Excellence, which funds my PhD.

On the day itself, over 100 PhD students exhibited their work in lots of different ways, including a few flashy displays and stunning posters about their research. We were given different research themes and I was included in the “population health” research theme – alongside 16 other research themes ranging from “quantum engineering”, “condensed matter physics” to “neuroscience” and “clinical treatments”.

All ready to go just in time before the official event started, I really hoped I wouldn’t be left alone for the rest of the afternoon polishing the pebbles that I had organised for my live voting. Fortunately, that didn’t happen! Time flew and without realising I chatted away for two and half hours to a constant flow of over visitors and other exhibitors – and actually hardly managed to move away to have a look around other people’s exhibitions. In total, I have been told, there were 200 people attending the event.

Visitors told me about their own mentoring experiences when they were younger, spoke about the things that mentors do and asked me questions about my research, such as why I research what I research, the methods that I am using in my research and what relevance I think my research can have for mentoring organisations- all questions that I could imagine could be re-asked in a PhD viva (in which case I guess it’s never too early to prepare!). This really made me think about my research and practice ways in which I can communicate this clearly to people who might be less familiar with the field or with research in general without babbling on for too long!

At the end of the event, I was really curious to see how many people interacted with my research and to look at the results of the live voting. I had asked individuals to vote on the following question: “Do you think mentoring young people in secondary schools has long-term benefits to their health?” and was actually quite surprised to see that 22 out of 25 individuals who voted, voted for “Yes” which indicates that there is something about the word mentoring that makes people think that it is beneficial, which itself is an interesting finding. Not a single person voted “no” and three individuals voted “not sure”.

Pebbles and 'live voting' ballot boxes — *Pebbles and ‘live voting’ ballot boxes*

The whole afternoon went well and made me realise the importance and benefit of talking to a variety of other people about my research – I guess you never know who you are going to meet and whether questions by visitors might actually turn into research questions one day.

How about signing up to present your research at the upcoming ESRC festival of social science, the MRC festival of medical research, other science festivals, talking about your research in pubs or talking to colleagues in the public engagement offices at your university?

Remembering Wartime Westray: a project with Emily Glass

Posted on 19 May 201618 July 2016 by Doctoral College

Emily Glass, a postgraduate researcher in the Department for Archaeology & Anthropology, is a woman with many projects on the go. Between digging onsite for the University of Bristol’s Berkeley Castle Project, preparing for her upgrade this summer, and conducting her regular research on communist Albania, she has also found time to work with the Westray Heritage Trust on a First World War community engagement event as part of the WWI centenary commemoration on the Orkney Island of Westray. We spoke to her about the project to learn about its potential impact and the value of preserving peoples’ stories in history.

‘Remembering Wartime Westray’ uses the 1916 Battle of Jutland and the sinking of HMS Hampshire as a focal point from which to explore how the island of Westray was impacted both physically and socially by the First World War.

Image 8 Sphagnum Moss collection — *Photos of Westray life from WWI: people’s memories contain the most vital and significant narrative pieces of Westray’s wartime history*

Why this point, specifically? Ms. Glass contextualises these particular events, explaining how by 1916 England had already been at war for 2 years. The Battle of Jutland brought home for the residents of Orkney “the fragile nature of being at war…first-hand”, because “the knowledge that German U-Boats had been able to get so close to the naval fleet meant that the Orcadian Home Front was no longer impenetrable. The active front line of war had shifted right up to the shores of the islands, bringing the horror and trauma home.” Across the nation, conscription became mandatory, rationing increased, and the death toll rose steadily. Stress, uncertainty and wartime fatigue overcame the island’s population: “a collective sense of vulnerability and loss was felt, but it was necessary to maintain some level of normality to cope with the daily routine of island-life”. It is particularly this tension, and the human faces and voices of this time, that Ms. Glass hopes to capture.

Image 3.2 Montage of FWW Objects Page 15 — Example of an embroidered postcard from Ms. Glass’s collection of artefacts.

Her project endeavours to create a display that invites the local public and visitors to reflect on the major events that took place on Westray’s Home Front, the role of WWI in shaping today’s Westray, and finally to collect the memories and stories that are still known from this particular period in time. Discussing the project with her and going through her materials, it is clear that a large part of her energy is focused on preserving stories from 1916 – which exist in the form of artefacts, wartime memorabilia, documents and people’s memories – before they disappear into the past altogether. “It is important to examine any physical remains of the First World War before they become unrecognised,” Ms. Glass explains, “and get the stories behind wartime objects while they are still known.”

The artefacts that Ms. Glass hopes to record are war souvenirs from WWI life: trench art, embroidered postcards, trophies of war, maps of Westray’s wartime places, diaries, photographs. The project will also host a series of workshops to gather these local memories and record the stories behind them, providing specialist training to Westray Heritage Trust staff and volunteers on the appropriate methods of recording wartime history. In this way, the project will contribute immensely to an increase in knowledge of the surrounding area, and provide an archive for future generations to explore.

All recordings will culminate in a permanent and publicly accessible documentary and photographic archive of wartime resources on Westray, and further contribute towards a planned 2018 exhibition to mark the centenary of the close of the First World War.

Remembering Wartime Westray is supported by the Orkney Islands Council World War One Culture Fund and the Westray Heritage Trust. It is aimed that this project will generate a significant increase in local knowledge that will contribute towards an archive legacy for future generations.

PGR Stories: Suzannah Young and researching the homeless

Posted on 1 April 201618 July 2016 by Doctoral College

Suzannah Young is a postgraduate researcher in the School of Modern Languages. Her research aims to find out where help with language is needed in homelessness services in Bristol and Cardiff, and what support is already available to people who need it. She wrote a post for us discussing her research, its value and impact, and what her PhD process has entailed so far.

Before starting at Bristol in September 2015, I worked for FEANTSA, the federation of homelessness services in Europe, for six years. I am also a translator and have an interest in migration. My research project aims to find out where help with language is needed in Bristol and Cardiff homelessness services and what support is available to people who need help.

When people move to a new country, they can become vulnerable to poverty, isolation and discrimination. If people who move country do not have access to employment or government help, or cannot find a place to live because landlords discriminate against them, they might end up homeless.

Homeless people need to use services that give advice, defend their rights and provide material support like food, clothes and showers. It can be difficult for people with low levels of English to use these services. The services might not feel able to talk to these people either. An interpreter (someone who translates a spoken message from one language into another) can help them interact with each other.

When I was working at FEANTSA, I often came across research or reports on practice that said that language difference was a problem for homeless service providers. It was a problem because they couldn’t communicate effectively with homeless people who spoke another language. There wasn’t any discussion of what was done to solve this problem, though. As I am passionate about languages and believe that everyone should have the right to a decent home, I wanted to set about finding out what was being done to help homeless people who speak other languages.

My research therefore looks at what is being done on the ground, in a context of squeezed budgets: whether people using homelessness services have access to interpreters or other types of language support, like staff who speak other languages, internet translation tools or peers (other service users) who act as interpreters. The study compares the situations in Bristol and Cardiff. It may discover good ways of working that services can copy from each other.

I would like to interview homelessness service users, homelessness service providers and language professionals to ask them about their experiences in this area – of accessing language support or of providing it. The plan is also to ask service users to produce (anonymous if wished) video diaries in which they can say in their own language what they would have liked to have said if they had had access to an interpreter when using a service. This would reflect their direct voice. Asking participants to use visual representations also diffuses the tension of language – if they wish, they can ‘speak without words’.

This project is multilingual because I will be interviewing people who speak a variety of languages. This will mean that preparation and data collection will involve various time-consuming and expensive language-related tasks. I will translate materials myself or through translators. I will employ interpreters to mediate interviews. I will use external transcribers to transcribe interview data and video diary entries in languages I do not understand. I will use translators to check the accuracy of the interpreting for languages I do not understand and I will employ subtitlers to translate the video diaries for the languages I do not understand.

The results should reflect the multilingualism of the project itself. I would like to provide a series of narratives for service users to take away, which can act as a guide to using language support services. I will need to make this available in other languages (which would require money, time and proofreading). The video diaries should be subtitled, and I hope the subtitles will be available in all the languages involved, not just in English.

The results of the study could be made available in a usable format to services for homeless people. They could be made into a briefing document that gives examples of how to work with an interpreter or translator or how to deal with a communication problem. Another briefing document for language professionals working for homelessness services can give specific guidelines about language requirements in homelessness services.

Morphing, composites and structural muscle: thoughts from an Advanced Composites postgraduate researcher

Posted on 3 March 201618 July 2016 by Doctoral College

We asked Eric Eckstein, the recipient of the prestigious Jefferson Goblet award for ‘overall best student paper’ at the 57th AIAA/ASCE/AHS/ASC Structures, Structural Dynamics and Materials Conference, about his work with ‘morphing’ composites. The following is a guest post about his journey to Bristol and with his composites research as an Advanced Composites postgraduate researcher with the ACCIS CDT.

A composite laminate made from carbon fiber and aluminum alloy, heated in an oven to 150°C. Aluminum wants to expand under heat, but carbon fiber doesn't. When you stick the two materials together, the whole laminate curls as each layer tries to have its own way. — A composite laminate made from carbon fiber and aluminum alloy, heated in an oven to 150°C. Aluminum wants to expand under heat, but carbon fiber doesn’t. When you stick the two materials together, the whole laminate curls as each layer tries to have its own way.

Bristol has been my home for the past four years, having originally been born and raised in the USA. Our university is one of the most well-known in the field of composites research, and was really a perfect fit for my interests in morphing structures. The big idea behind morphing is to open up new ways of changing the shape of an object. Traditionally, engineers get things to move about using a collection of hinges and actuators, but in many situations, it’s better to facilitate movement using organic flexing and twisting motions. Nature has been using these morphing techniques for millennia, we see it in action every time a flower pivots itself to track the sun, or a pine cone closes up in the rain. Meanwhile, engineers aim to exploit the same principles in order to make everything from more efficient aircraft to haptic feedback touch screens. This is all great, but what really turned me onto the subject was an opportunity to achieve morphing in a simple, elegant manner.

Most moving structures have actuators separate from the structure, just like how our muscles are separate from our bones. Morphing structures, like those sun-tracking flowers, have their muscle and structure built into one. For cases where engineers can take the same approach, their moving structures won’t need hinges, pistons, or any other steampunk-like hardware, thus they can be made beautifully simple.

thremal-morphing — Ceramix matrix composite morphing structure at room temperature.

thermal-morphing2 — When heated to 1000°C, the structure bends upwards by about 6mm, driven by the thermal expansion of a stainless steel strut.

One of the biggest challenges we face is finding a good structural muscle. The perfect material for the job would be able to expand and contract on command, much like our own muscles, yet be stiff and strong enough to bear great loads. A great deal of progress has been made on this front using metals and polymers which respond to heat by expanding or contracting, but composite materials open up a whole new world of possibilities. Because their expansion and stiffness properties can be accurately tailored by the designer, they can allow for a rich variety of movements, everything from bending, twisting, to snapping shut like a venus fly-trap. I think that working with composite materials is akin to an artist swapping out his charcoal pencil for a whole pallet of rich colours.

The simplicity of a thermally-driven morphing structure can give them a natural durability in adverse environments, such as salty seas or hot jet exhausts. The right materials need to be found, of course, and that’s one of our main focuses. Metal-matrix and ceramic matrix composites have given us promising results, however these materials are still very much adolescent developments, compared to mankind’s established metallics knowledge.

We hope of course that our technology is picked up by the aerospace industry, but the real icing on the cake would be to find other, much broader applications. I’ve read about an idea where morphing micro-capsules of a virus-fighting drug could be injected into your body, lying in wait for months until you get a fever. That increase in body temperature triggers the thermally-driven morphing capsule to release the drug automatically. Who knows what other applications exist?

10 reasons to exhibit your work at ‘Research without Borders’

Posted on 18 February 201618 July 2016 by Doctoral College

Not sure why you might want to showcase your research at ‘Research without Borders’? Here’s 10 good reasons why you might want to get involved:

1. Get out of the lab / library

We spend so much of our time focusing on doing our research that we sometimes forget that there is a whole world of exciting opportunities for us to take advantage of! Take a break for a few hours and come down to @Bristol to tell others about what you’ve been working on. You’ll be much more relaxed and refreshed when you return to your work – and you might even have a few new ideas to try out!

2. Meet other researchers and connect with the wider Bristol community

Postgraduate research is so specialised and individual that sometimes you forget that you are part of a community of more than three thousand research students. Come and meet one another, share ideas – you might even make some new friends!

3. Potential employers

This year you won’t just be showcasing your research to other PGRs and the Bristol academic community – we’ll also be inviting key external partners, including academics from other institutions, industrial partners, local community groups and organisations, the Bristol City Council – the list goes on and on. Let us know if there is anyone in particular that you would like us to invite. This is an ideal opportunity for you to network with these high-profile guests. You never know, this could be a foot in the door for your post-PhD career!

4. Meet the people funding your research

We’ll also be extending an invitation to the charities and research councils who fund your research. This is your opportunity to show them what you have been doing with the money they have invested in you. It’s also a great opportunity for you to speak with funders about any ideas you might have for future research projects. It never hurts to make friends with the people who hold the purse strings!

5. Talk to interested people about your research

Your supervisors, parents, partner, and friends are probably all getting a bit tired of hearing about your work. This is an ideal opportunity to talk to others who haven’t yet heard all about it. Plus, it’s always a good challenge to try to explain your research in a way that others can understand it. Take advantage of the fact that you’ll have a captive audience on hand.

6. Explore interconnections between your work and others’

You won’t be the only one doing all of the talking – this is a great opportunity for you to find out what other people are working on. You might just realise that there are connections between your work and others. Breaking out of your research bubble is never a bad idea!

7. Generate new ideas and collaborations

Be an academic in action! Meet new people, develop new ideas, learn from one another – that’s what being an academic is all about! This is your opportunity to spark new ideas with people you might not encounter in your day-to-day work.

8. Apply your expertise to real-world problems

Not sure what kind of impact your research could have on global challenges? How about problems affecting the city of Bristol itself? In addition to the research showcase there will also be opportunities for you to contribute your expertise to addressing real-world problems. A series of ‘Grand Challenges’ will be running throughout the day, enabling you to see how your knowledge and experience can help to solve some of world’s biggest problems.

9. Win prestigious prizes

In the past, we’ve given away iPads, ferry boat rides, restaurant vouchers, Amazon vouchers… you never know what you might win! This year is no exception! We’ll be offering prizes for the 3MT, best poster display and best interactive research display.

*we’d like to confirm that, sadly, not everyone can win a prize www.quickmeme.com

10. It’ll be fun!

With interactive maps, graffiti walls and quick-fire talks, this event is going to be jam-packed with fun activities for everyone! Free drinks and food are just the icing on the cake.

200 — Even the minions are excited for Research without Borders

So what are you waiting for? Sign up and reserve your place now!

What is the NSPPS and why should you get involved?

Posted on 17 February 201618 July 2016 by Doctoral College

Alan Kennedy, a postgraduate researcher from the School of Geographical Sciences, writes about why he enjoys attending the Natural Systems and Processes Poster Session (NSPPS) year after year, and why current students should consider signing up. Already know you want to take part? Apply here!

The NSPPS is, it appears, now quite an establishment in Bristol: 2016 will be the event’s ninth year. What is it, and what has secured its place in the University of Bristol calendar for all these years?

Well, as the name suggests, it is an academic poster session welcoming pretty much anything relating to the science of the natural world. It turns out this description covers a lot of science, with representatives from Earth Sciences, Geographical Sciences, Physics, Life Sciences, Engineering, Chemistry and Mathematics. It’s a fascinating melting pot of ideas with some quirky and abstract topics on show, but each being a tiny, crucial cogwheel in the Earth’s system. The range of topics can show off the University’s diverse scientific community, spark collaborations and simply baffle all at the same time.

Besides the ‘boring’ scientific part of the event, NSPPS is a great occasion. Set in the Wills Memorial Building Great Hall, there is a plentiful stock of free food and drink and the social side of the event is great. Often the people carrying out the research are even more colourful than the science itself (especially after some free drinks). The social side also ensures the whole event is very relaxed, making it a great opportunity to get some practice and early feedback on your poster and presentation skills before taking on external conferences. Maybe you’re thinking of going to EGU in April? Then this is the perfect warm up. Added to that, there is healthy competition with entrants battling it out for a series of prizes from staff and student votes for the best posters. They’re proper prizes too (I can verify, last year I won an Acer tablet for the staff vote), so it’s definitely worth entering!

So here’s why NSPPS is still live and kicking after 9 years: diverse science, diverse people, laid back atmosphere, prizes and (of course) free food and drink.

Where? Great Hall, Wills Memorial Building.

When? 2-5pm, Monday 7^th March.

Deadlines: Abstract submissions by midnight, Friday 29^th February. Apply now! https://tiny.cc/nspps

The Bristol PLUS Award: Awal Fuseini

Posted on 22 January 201618 July 2016 by Doctoral College

The Bristol PLUS Award recognises and rewards University of Bristol students who have gained significant professional and life skills through work experience, volunteering and other activities outside of their studies. The award is designed to help you enhance your CV, develop a variety of employability skills and be more prepared for the interview process.

Awal Fuseini, a doctoral student in the School of Veterinary Sciences, shared his experience with completing the Bristol PLUS Award last year.

As a postgraduate research student, I am always on the lookout for any extracurricular activity that can improve my confidence, networking skills, presentation skills and add some weight to my CV, because I am well aware that recruiters/ employers are now looking beyond degree certificates. The activities leading to the award of the Bristol Plus Award certainly tick most of the boxes, hence why I decided to complete it.

The interactive nature of the workshops means all participants are encouraged to actively take part, this builds confidence and improves on team working skills. Some of the workshops eg the interview skills workshop gives participants useful information on what employers look for during interviews including body language skills, dress code and general interview skills. One of the most important workshops I attended was: The power of relationships in the work place. After the workshop, I learnt very important skills that will enable me to work successfully with any difficult person in my future career no matter how complex the person’s life is. Other useful workshops included: Developing leadership skills and Clueless about your careers?

During the work experience aspect of the award, I was able to gain valuable work experience whilst getting paid and more importantly use it towards the award. My work experience was with a food certification company in London. My role involved visiting food processing companies and slaughterhouses to ensure that all procedures were consistent with the standards of the certification body. I did also do some administrative duties at the Head Office as well.

I have already encouraged some of my peers to complete the Bristol Plus Award and I will not hesitate in recommending it to the wider University of Bristol postgraduate research student community, it is a worthwhile award!

Curious? Think you can stand out from the crowd? Attend one of the Introductory talks hosted by the University’s Careers Service. For an overview of the award structure, see the below graphic: