On Friday, I had the privilege of attending the online Escape Room Showcase organised by the Learning and Teaching Academy, Herriot-Watt University (@LTA_HWU). I had an absolutely fantastic time! My day started early with a desert island-themed escape room where I worked with a small group of other academics over Teams to break out. While […]
Escape Rooms in Education: Showcase and Celebration of Practice Read More »
Belated happy new year! Fingers crossed 2022 is better. Towards the end of last year I decided to set myself an advent calendar challenge to make a data visualisation using R for every day from December 1-24th. It was a ridiculous idea mostly because I tend to obsess over every small detail and spend hours
I’m delighted to say our paper “The Therapeutic Potential of the Stem Cell Secretome for Spinal Cord Repair: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis” was published recently in OBM Neurobiology. If you’re interested in reading the full paper, you can access it here. It’s open access so isn’t behind an annoying paywall. Here’s a summary of
At the end of November I had the privilege of taking part in Explorathon which is the Scotland-wide programme of public engagement events as part of European Researcher’s Night. As in-person events weren’t possible for obvious reasons, everything was ran online. I created the short video about my project for the Scottish Research Showcase: I
It’s (finally) here! The big paper from my PhD titled “Systemic conditioned medium treatment from interleukin-1 primed mesenchymal stem cells promotes recovery after stroke” was just published last week in Stem Cell Research & Therapy. Thanks to my fantastic co-workers who made it possible! It’s open access meaning anyone can read it here without an annoying paywall. To me it represents several years of work, lots of long days, several weekends in the lab and an epic battle
New paper: using stem cells as mini factories for stroke repair Read More »
Oh geez, I haven’t updated my blog since June. The reason is that I’ve been really busy finishing my PhD. It’s a rather drawn-out process which confused many of my friends and family. After I handed in at the end of September lots of people were excitedly asking if I’d finished. Then I had to
PhD Examination Process Explained Read More »
I’m really excited to have been selected to present a poster at the University of Manchester Postgraduate Summer Research Showcase again. It’s such a special event because it brings together postgraduates from all disciplines to share their work. As a PhD student, it’s easy to forget about the breath of research being done at the
Poster Video Abstract Read More »
Just before Christmas, I was fortunate to be awarded an Institutional Strategic Support Fund (ISSF) public engagement grant from the Wellcome Trust to develop some new activities to help explain my lab’s stroke research. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been working really hard to get everything ready for our first event in June.
Public Engagement Update Read More »
This is my cat, Marzipan, responding to some catnip I rubbed on the floor. She usually responds by rolling around but other behaviours often seen include licking, sniffing, biting, drooling and kicking. The effects typically last for 5-15 minutes and after it wears off, they won’t respond again for about 30 minutes. Have you ever
Caturday Science: Catnip Read More »
In a break from convention, here’s a more personal post about why I think volunteering has had a positive impact on my PhD life. In my spare time, I’m an assistant cub scout at 23rd Manchester Scout Group and have been since April 2016. I was involved in scouting as a child for almost 10
I love scouting and it makes me a better scientist Read More »
