How to be a zoologist – Transition Year Week 2019

Zoology TY week is a programme of events put on for 24 transition year (4th year) students per year, drawn from schools across Ireland. Gaining a place is a competitive process, with 90 or so applications in each year so far. The winners get to experience what it’s like to be a zoology undergraduate, participating in workshops, practicals, lectures and discussions, with a tree walk, a bird race and a mini-field trip thrown in. They get hands-on experience and also the opportunity to discuss the life of a zoologist with undergraduates, post-graduates and teaching staff. The sessions are designed to show the breadth of the subject, ranging from consideration of tiny biology like the genetic analysis of what makes an embryo grow correctly, through individual animals in their parasitology, marine and terrestrial biology, and behaviour, up to the entire system in ecology and evolutionary biology. They are taught by the same lecturers as teach our undergraduates, so the TY class get to know their future teachers too. The following blog consists of paragraphs written by the Zoology TY class of 2019, half way through their week.

Applications for next year’s TY week will open in November – look for an application form on the TCD Zoology website then!

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Exploring the One Health Initiative in the Irish context

Last week, the Zoology department hosted the first Irish One Health workshop, welcoming speakers and attendees from a range of disciplines. This gathering provided an opportunity to discuss the One Health initiative, which aims to solve world health problems through transdisciplinary collaboration, through a series of short presentations discussing various aspects of global health, and ample time for discussion between attendees, including representatives from the DAFM, EPA, HSE and AFBI.

Our own Dr Peter Stuart, who organised this workshop, gave a fascinating introduction to the concept of One Health, using the example of Hookworm in the American South during the 20th century as proof that we need to work collaboratively to solve current health issues.

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Lightning Strikes at TCD

Secret Vatican archives, xenophobia, de-extinction, parasitism and hoovers were just a few of the many topics on the menu at the 2017 School of Natural Sciences Lightning Talks. This annual event brought together 24 PhD students and Professors from across the Botany, Geography, Geology and Zoology disciplines to present their research and battle it out to win the respect of their colleagues (and bragging rights). The catch? Presentations were limited to 120 seconds, a difficult feat considering how much scientists like to talk about their own work! Continue reading “Lightning Strikes at TCD”

Formally informal conferences

 

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One of my favourite parts of working as a researcher during the summer (aside from quiet campuses with less students around) definitely has to be the “conference season”. Indeed, I don’t need to convince many people that conferences are one of the lively and exciting parts of doing science that rightly mix traveling, networking (and sometimes drinking) and learning about so many new things (and sometimes hangovers).

One of the problems though is that they can sometimes be overwhelming. It’s hard to find a balance between the right amount of networking (how many friends/collaborators do I want to meet and how many new ones do I want to make) and the right amount of learning (which talks do I want to attend and how much can I get from them). Although everyone has their own technique to deal with these questions, it seems to me that it boils down to the number of people attending the conference and the objectives of the conference organisers. One solution is to aim conferences towards a more manageable size with a clear emphasis on networking and learning.

One such conference is the annual BES Macro conference! As has became a happy ritual over the last 4 years, I was awaiting July with impatience for this year’s one organised in Oxford by Natalie Cooper and Rich Grenyer. As a disclaimer though, I do not consider myself as a macroecologist at all (most of my work is on macroevolution methods). So why do I go every year? I don’t even know what macroecology is! Well one of the first points is that this conference covers a vast array of topics, this year reaching far beyond the classic bird species richness heat maps with presentations on microbe populations in tree holes and sampling biases in the fossil record! The second point is because I think this conference contains all the ingredients that I think make a good conference:

First, mix different career levels:
For early career scientists like myself it can sometimes be a bit intimidating to mainly hear talks by “veteran” scientists. In fact I often think to myself just before giving a talk, how lame mine will be in comparison to the other people. Not that mixing different career levels makes my talk less lame (!), it has at least the benefit of making me feel better. It also has the undeniable benefit of making it easier to network with the big wigs if you spoke in the same session as them. At BES Macro 2016, each session was a good mix of every career level making it much more casual. Even the plenary speakers ranged from Professor Tim Blackburn to About-to-be-doctor Hannah White!

Second, make most of the talks short:
People have mixed feelings about lightning talks: from the speaker’s point of view, when you have exciting results it can be frustrating to convey your message in 5 minutes. Also these talks are sometimes more difficult to write than a classic 10-15 minutes one! However, from a listener’s point of view, think about how much more you absorb, on average, from these extra 5-10 minutes that make a classic talk? On a couple of talks: probably much more; on 2 days or more of conference: probably not that much! Besides, if 5 minutes was not enough and just peaked your curiosity, it makes an excellent opportunity to network (“Hi, I really enjoyed your talk. About that, [insert your burning question here]?”).

Third, add a nice dose of transferable skills:
Another point of conferences that can be negative is that you chain-listen to many many talks all day long. That has the benefit of giving a good overview of your field of research but can also make you slightly sleepy! One solution to break this continuous rhythm of talks is to do it with discussion sessions that can either be about transferable skills or about big questions in the field. For example, at BES Macro 2016 we had an excellent discussion session on reproducibility and another on the classic “What is Macroecology?” question.

And finally, don’t forget to add some rants:
What makes a good conference lies also in how much you feel part of the field of research covered by the conference. One way to convey that is to be part of or at least listen to the “hot” debates shaking the field. In this conference for example, we had two “official rants” by Shai Meiri and Adam Algar on what is going wrong in macroecology (but still how much cool work is done).

And of course, the main ingredient is the attitude of the people towards the conference. As Rich Grenyer put it in his welcoming introduction: “this conference is formally informal.”

Hope to see you at the next conference!

Photo credit: Thomas Guillerme

Original post

3 years as a PhD student

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I arrived in Ireland October 2012 with the purpose of undertaking a PhD supervised by Natalie Cooper on Primates evolution. Looking back, the start of the whole endeavour seemed really stressful to me (new country, new customs, new language) and the project just as frightening (what do I do?, where do I start?, will I be able to do it?)… What happened after was way below my expectations: these three years were anything but stressful and frightening!
OK, even though not everything went smoothly and it had to take the best of the personalities (that are thankfully common sights in Trinity College’s Zoology Department) for dealing with some ups and downs, here is my top 5 list of personal thoughts that always improved the two aspects of my PhD: the working aspect (the research) and the “social” aspect (feeling relaxed and enjoying it).

Be ready to change your PhD

As I mentioned in the first line, my PhD was supposed to be on Primates evolution. In the end, the world “Primates” is mentioned only once (and that is, buried in a sentence about several other mammalian orders). Of course, sometimes the PhD is a Long Quiet River if everything goes well and you keep your highest interest in the original topic. However, sometimes it changes completely! And this should never be a problem! The PhD should be allowed to evolve just as much as yourself (or more pragmatically: your field) evolves into these three or four years.

Failure happens to everyone

Another major part about the PhD (and about the scientific endeavour itself!) is that it will fail. More or less often and more or less dramatically in each case but failure should just be part of the process. As a early career researcher, you can learn a lot from the mistakes and the success of others. However, I found that there is nothing much more personally instructing than the trial and error. I already mentioned how my biggest PhD disaster led to my most positive development.

Stay open-minded and curious

Writing the thesis or even just doing the lab/computer work for the PhD can narrow your mind and highly decrease your sanity. I found that the best way to avoid that was to try as much as possible to make the PhD only priority number two and put all the other things (seminars, meeting speakers, chatting/helping colleagues, etc…) before it. It has two advantages for the PhD: (1) you don’t work on it 24/7 and (2) everything you learn outside of it will actually be super useful for the PhD. In the Zoology Derpartment, we were only a couple of people doing macroevolution surrounded by ecologists. Yet, I think my work benefited heavily from the influence from these people.

Don’t rush

One thing I found nice with the PhD is that before you even start – before day one! – you already know the final deadline. OK, at day one, the handing in date seems far away (3 or 4 years away actually!) but that leaves you plenty of time for doing awesome research, writing it down as papers/chapters (and even trying to publish them before the deadline) and going to the pub or to other non-PhD recreational events…

Chat with your colleagues

Finally, I found that I gained so much just by chatting with my colleagues. And by colleagues I mean my fellow PhD students of course but also with the post-docs and the staff. I always found a long term benefit to both PhD aspects, whether it was talking about the latests video games during working time (I’m not only looking at you @yodacomplex) or having heated debates about species selection during coffee time.
I know much of these tips worked for me but might not apply to other people. In the end their is only one ultimate tip: make your PhD a hell of a good time!

Photo Credit: Thomas Guillerme