Archive for the ‘Departmental Information’ Category

A guest post from Rui Gao sharing her impressions from a year out working at the Institute for Cancer Research

As part of my degree, I undertook a placement year between my second and final years. I thoroughly enjoyed my placement experience and highly recommend other students who are thinking seriously about pursuing postgraduate studies to do the same. My year at the Institute of Cancer Research allowed me to gain countless experiences and insights not necessarily attainable by just attending lectures and practicals.

As someone who had always been considering postgraduate studies, the year in industry/research programme was an excellent fit for me because in many ways, the placement was a “test run” which allowed me to determine if a postgraduate degree was the right choice for me. During my placement, I gained deep and meaningful insights into the world of research and what it was like to work in a lab day in and day out. Short-term summer placements can also offer students a glimpse into research and expose them to new techniques, but with a year-long placement, I could really delve deeply into my project, and develop and optimise it, which is not always the case with a short-term placement because simply learning the techniques used and doing the necessary background reading can take up to weeks or months.

I also found it highly inspiring to spend a year working alongside talented scientists who were already established in their fields. My social interactions with them were just as rewarding as the practical work I carried out and I received invaluable advice and suggestions from them simply through lunchtime discussions or even over a few drinks after work. I attended seminars by leading figures in cancer research on a regular basis and on a few occasions had the chance to sit down and discuss their research with them, which were exciting and eye-opening opportunities.

One of the greatest rewards from my placement was the sense of accomplishment I felt. As with anything, what you get from it is proportionate to the amount of effort you put in, but it was immensely satisfying to observe in myself a marked improvement in my technical and analytical skills. Over the course of the year I matured and developed as a scientist. There were of course some setbacks and frustrations along the way, but that is part and parcel of research, and I think learning how to deal with failures efficiently is an essential skill to succeed in science.

Now, as a result of my year in research, I am more motivated than ever to return to Imperial and do well in my final year, then continue on to postgraduate studies. It has allowed me to ascertain that a career in research is the right path for me; I can now apply for a postgraduate degree knowing what it entails and what is expected of me. Finally, having substantial research experience and good references from my placement supervisor will undoubtedly enhance my application for a variety of positions, whether Masters/PhD courses or other careers.

I came across this blogpost yesterday with useful advice on how to communicate with professors and lecturers by email. Although it comes from Wellesley College which, being a US liberal arts college for women only, is a rather different institution to Imperial College, much of the advice is relevant and helpful.

It is clear from my email inbox that many students already have a clear idea of how to write a polite and effective email message, but I’ve also seen examples from students who are not so sure how to go about the task.

To the points of technique and etiquette mentioned in the blogpost, I would like to add the suggestion that students try to keep to a minimum the number of times that they email staff at weekends or during holidays, out of consideration for the fact that staff are entitled to a break from their teaching duties from time to time.

Through the National Student Survey, our final year students have the opportunity now to give their views on their entire experience of being a student at Imperial College and we would very much like to encourage them to do so.

The organisation of the NSS means that unless at least 50% our our students complete the survey, the results from our department will not be included in the published report and so will be disregarded. So it’s crucial that we at least cross that threshold. But even more importantly, we would very much like to have the views of every single student in the final year. The Students Union has a very good blogpost explaining the importance of the NSS.

You have now been here for three or four or five years and I’m sure you will have plenty of opinions on your experiences at the College. I hope many of those experiences were positive. But in the real world not everything always goes to plan so there will have been downsides as well.

For the survey to be really meaningful, we need honest returns on the positive and negative aspects of your time here. We need to know what worked well for you and also about those areas where improvement is required.

Please help us to help future students by filling in the survey as candidly as you can.

First of all – following on from the last post, many congratulations to the Imperial College team for their successes in the Grand Final of the iGEM competition in Boston, in which they were runners-up. What a fantastic achievement!

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to see the team’s talk before they left of the US and was mightily impressed. Not just by the quality of the work in the project and the presentation, but also by the inclusion of some maths in their analyses, which was used to model the rate of production of plant growth hormones by their engineered bacteria.

First order differential equations may cause some biology and biochemistry students to blanche but it’s all a matter of having an appropriate introduction. Maths is an inescapable part of the modern life sciences and so is being given more attention. For more background on this, have a look at this article by me in the Times Higher Education magazine.

Although we do not ask for A level maths as an entry requirement, we feel it is still important that our students learn to see the value of the discipline in biology and biochemistry. The question is: what is the best way to go about that?

I popped into one of the maths tutorials that we run for first year biochemists the other week to see how they were getting on with practice in calculus. Pretty well, it seemed to me. But what do you think? I would be interested to know your views the subject.

In the meantime, have a look at a recent article on Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column in the Guardian. It shows very nicely how even a modest understanding of maths can prevent you from drawing the wrong conclusion from your data. If you’d like to read more of Dr Goldacre’s output, I can recommend his Bad Science book, which is currently going cheap in its Kindle incarnation. It’s not very mathsy but is very good on the question of evidence.

Update (17th Nov, 16:16): A piece in today’s Guardian about plans for changing maths education in schools.

However good the lecturer, there’s only so much science you can learn through the process of being talked at in a lecture theatre. If you really want to get a sense of what research involves, you need to get into a laboratory. Some of our students have been doing just that recently, with considerable enjoyment and success.

First, as you may have heard, a team of Life Science and Bioengineering undergraduates has just won the European final of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition and will be heading to MIT next month to compete on the world stage. Their winning project aimed to re-engineer E.coli bacteria to tackle the problems of desertification and poor crop growth in dry climates.

Screenshot of the Imperial College iGEM Wiki

You can check out the details of the project on their Wiki (which also won a separate award) and find out more about the students involved (I like the cartoon versions of the team members). The Biochemistry and Biology students on the team are Atipat Patharagulpong, Chris Schoene, Frank Machin, Nicolas Krai, Nikki Kapp and Rebekka Bauer. Congratulations and good luck!

Congratulations are also due to Katarzyna Roguska (a 3rd year Biochemistt) and Sevanna Shahbazian (a recent graduate) who were involved as undergrads in a research project on the pathogenic microbe Chlamydia trachomatis in Dr Rey Carabeo’s lab. They helped to establish a system for examining protein-protein interactions involved in infection and so earned a place as co-authors on a scientific paper that has just been published. That’s quite an achievement.

Thinking about getting involved in research? Have a look a the College’s UROP scheme, or try to get a place on next year’s iGEM team (contact Profs Paul Freemont or Dick Kitney). Alternatively, applications are now open for the summer studentship programme at the John Innes Research Centre. It’s your call.

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome!

Welcome to our freshers — those of you who are brand new to the College, brand new to London and brand new to Britain.

Welcome back to our second, third and fourth years, who having already drunk deep from the well of Imperial, are returning for another swig. Cheers!

And welcome to this new Life Sciences Blog for undergraduates. In the very best scientific spirit, this is most definitely an experiment. And not a very well designed experiment at that, since I am not certain what the outcome will be.

The aim is to open up a new and more informal line of communication between students and the department. There are plenty of lines of communication available to you already which I hope will address most of the technical, administrative and intellectual questions you have about your course. You can visit the Undergraduate office on level 2 of the Biochemistry Building (near to where your pigeonholes are located), talk to your personal tutor, talk to the Senior Tutor — Dr Maureen Taylor for biochemists and Dr Steve Cook for biologists — or to myself, Prof Stephen Curry (Director of Undergraduate Studies) or Dr Mike Tristem (Director of the Biology stream). For queries about lectures, make sure to approach your lecturer before or after a lecture or during practicals or send them a friendly, inquisitive email. There are discussion boards on Blackboard for chat about the course between students, which may also involve staff. Your reps can also take student concerns and requests to the teaching committees and the staff-student committee.

That should cover most of the bases so why should we need any more? I hope this blog will provide a way for me — and other members of staff — to alert you to departmental news and to raise more general issues about the experience of studying for a degree in the life sciences. The particular point of doing this in a blog format, which allows two-way communication, is so that they can be discussed. So please don’t be shy.

These are interesting times for the university sector in the UK, a euphemism for the fact that academia is under pressure as never before. The government is placing increasing demands on universities to ensure that they do a better job of serving their student communities — no bad thing especially when the cost to the student is going up rather alarmingly. But at the same time research funds are shrinking because of budget cuts, which means that the business of keeping a research group going is harder than ever. Luckily, the staff in our department are a hard-working bunch of men and women who, with a steely eye, are ready to face these challenges.

We will do our best to make your learning experience a rich and fulfilling one.  Which means that we will try to stretch your brain till it hurts. In a good way. For best results you will also need participate fully in the treatment — you are not to be a passive patient. Your job at university is to make the most of every opportunity for learning.

Good luck! Oh, and one more thing: welcome!

Mon 3rd Oct – update: The commenting appears to be working now. Please feel free to make use of the facility!