… brought to you by Earth System Science (ESS) and Cambridge Climate, Life and Earth (C-CLEAR) DTP students. This is a series of blogs written by PhD students involved in the NERC Doctoral Training Partnerships at Cambridge. They have a diverse range of expertise and research areas, with students from the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Cambridge in the following departments: Archaeology, Chemistry, DAMTP, Earth Sciences, Genetics, Geography, Plant Sciences and Zoology.
By Craig Walton, PhD student in Earth Sciences
I have something to admit: ever since starting my PhD in the Department of Earth Sciences here at Cambridge, I’ve developed something of an obsession. Everyone knows it. I can’t stop talking about it. Phosphorous (15P – Figure 1). In my opinion element 15 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything – not … Continue reading
By Dominic Absolon, PhD Student in the Department of Plant Sciences
I’m currently at the start of my second year of PhD study in the Department of Plant Sciences. Confusingly, the lab group that I work in technically does not work on plants. Instead we work on the single cell, evolutionary precursors, from which all plants evolved; algae. More accurately, plants evolved from green algae, … Continue reading
By Andrea Chlebikova, PhD Student in the Department of Chemistry
I am a PhD student in atmospheric chemistry, trying to improve our understanding of some of the reactions happening in the air around us that can form secondary pollution. In practice, my day-to-day work mainly consists of writing code. But my scientific interests are not limited to a narrow sub-field, and while I enjoy my … Continue reading
By Conor Bolas
Technical Adviser at ITOPF Ltd.
So I am now four months into my shiny new job and I am currently working through the minor corrections to my thesis. Here is a wee post about what that is like and what I think of the whole thing.
Firstly, my thesis.
Writing it was really, really hard work. The last three months were … Continue reading
In January 2019 I started the mammoth 9500+ mile journey to reach the “land of always winter”… Antarctica. What laid ahead was two months of field work collecting diatom specimens for my PhD research. No need to sweat though, as temperatures down in Antarctica during the summer hover around 0°C … Continue reading
By Emily Tilby, PhD Student in the Department of Archaeology
Last summer I was lucky enough to take part in a season of excavations at Shanidar Cave in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in Kurdistan, northeastern Iraq, as part of an ongoing project investigating the chronology, environmental context and hominin use of the Cave and the wider region. I was nervous as this was … Continue reading
A new academic year means new students! The new cohort of PhD students now has a term under their belt and are settling into PhD life. It was a busy start to the year for many of us, with lots of new information to take in, but it’s been a great few months in a warmly welcoming DTP.… Continue reading
By Helen Brooks, Second Year PhD in Geography
What are the real world applications of your research? Just one of those questions that, as researchers, many of us get asked only too often. For some, the immediate relevance is obvious, but for others, less so.
In recent years, there has been a real drive to show “Impact” of scientific research, i.e. to show that … Continue reading
By Victoria Honour 2nd year PhD
The Halls of Power. Westminster. Whitehall. Parliament. The Houses. Democracy…
Before this Spring I read the news on BBC, knew the names of some senior MPs, and skim read a manifesto before voting. I would have classed myself as having a standard level of political interest. Ultimately, I was a Scientist-in-training. An igneous petrologist who wanted to understand the … Continue reading
By Victoria Honour 2nd year PhD
The Halls of Power. Westminster. Whitehall. Parliament. The Houses. Democracy…
Before this Spring I read the news on BBC, knew the names of some senior MPs, and skim read a manifesto before voting. I would have classed myself as having a standard level of political interest. Ultimately, I was a Scientist-in-training. An igneous petrologist who wanted to understand the … Continue reading