Time flies, we’re already into the second half of the year and it’s been a year since I was on my research visit in Norway. Sadly I’ve not been away anywhere that exciting recently!
Anyhow, read on to find out what I was up to over the past three months, including trying to balance academic work with running a spin-out company.
For previous monthly updates see here: Beyond the PhD Series.
Work
Research fellow (postdoc) job
Recently I’ve found it increasingly difficult to not just balance time between my postdoc job and spin-out company, but also within my postdoc role.
Currently I’m funded to work on one particular project. Admittedly on two different grants for slightly different bits of work, but nevertheless with the same team. The issue though is that I have loose ends from old projects which ideally I’d spend some time on to wrap up and finalise. Plus, I sometimes take on extra things not related to any of this, such as supervising undergraduate projects, giving talks, or conducting PhD reviews – the first of which I did just recently.
Therefore I often find myself busy working on activities which are productive things, but none of these are part of the project I’m actually supposed to be working on.
I’ve therefore had to become a bit more selective and good at saying no to these extra things. The last few weeks I’ve thankfully had some more solid blocks of time to make progress on my main work.
Papers
I worked to get two papers submitted to a workshop at ECML. We should hear the outcome in mid July. One of these papers was rejected from another workshop in the last Beyond the PhD post. Hopefully it fairs better at this workshop. The other paper is for a recent piece of work with an undergraduate I was co-supervising.
I’ve also been a part of a paper which we submitted to Science (yes, that Science!). Sadly it was rejected, as we expected, but the process didn’t take long so it is now under review elsewhere. I’ve written before about the process of getting something accepted at Science (this), albeit not an academic article. You can read more about it here: How to get published in Science or Nature.
Grants
We submitted a £150k grant which I’m a co-investigator on for a health related project. Grants are becoming increasingly competitive so we’ll see how it fares.
Events
It’s been a busy period for different events at the university including different seminars, festivals, and lectures, this includes:
- Attending a lecture by Geoffrey Hinton – who needs no introduction for anyone interested in AI! It was actually a pretty entertaining lecture and he seems to have a great sense of humour.
- I gave a talk at a digital health seminar series on the process of starting a spin-out company. It was nice to reflect upon the process and the audience asked some great questions. Since then I’ve now been invited to two events to give similar talks, one in Bristol and another in Newcastle.
Also, an academic in department has been good at organising events for postdocs so I went along to a free pottery session. I made a few small cups:
Spin-out company
It’s been a busy time at the spin-out company too. We’ve been to lots of different events showcasing our work and building useful connections.
We’re trying to be more active on LinkedIn so you’re more than welcome to follow us on there. Here is our company LinkedIn page.
It’s an exciting time because we were shortlisted for four (!) categories at an awards ceremony happening in mid July:
- Best Tech For Good
- Best Use of AI
- HealthTech Business of The Year
- People’s Choice
We’re up against some amazing other companies based in our region, so we’ll see how it goes!
The Savvy Scientist website
New posts
Since the last post in this Beyond the PhD series, I’ve posted three articles:
- PhD Profiles: Huw, PhD Graduate in Mathematics, University of Bristol
- Types of Research – Methods and Examples
- Feeling Like a Fraud? Let’s Talk About PhD Imposter Syndrome
I’m really happy to have restarted the PhD Profiles series. I’m keen to hear from people who want to contribute, so if you’re interested please reach out.
Website traffic
Traffic has been going through a bit of a slow down recently. This is to be expected as we approach the summer, but even so it hasn’t fared great compared to last year – despite more actively posting, including considering SEO more.
One option is to ignore it, and just concentrate on creating useful content. However since I want to ensure that useful content actually reaches as many people as possible, I may need to think of more proactive approaches. One such route, which I’ve always put off, is social media.
Time off
Holidays
Over the past three months I’ve had two breaks: firstly a chilled out week in Portugal. As always it’s nice to have a relaxing week away. Also I had a custard apple there – wow, what a fruit!
Secondly I went on a weekend away with my extended family to the Isle of Wight, which was nice.
Food growing
As anyone who has followed this series for a while will know, I’ve been trying to grow quite a few different fruits plants at home. This includes juneberries, tayberries, miracots, and many more, alongside your more typical strawberries and apples.
Some of them have taken several years to get established before producing fruit. This year lots of them have fruited for the first time such as cherries and the juneberries. It has been great to try so many new fruits and I look forward to producing plenty more as the plants grow more.
Media I’ve consumed
Books
Creating a Forest Garden: Working with Nature to Grow Edible Crops – Martin Crawford. A decent book for the small group of people interested in creating an entire ecosystem of food plants. I’m moving more towards growing trees and fruit bushes, which produce food for many years, rather than typical vegetable crops which only last one season. Earlier this year I actually bought two persimmon trees from the author.
The To-do List – Mike Gayle. An entertaining read. I often find myself buried in to-do lists so the book resonated with me!
Three Apples Fell from the Sky – Narine Abgaryan. I’ll be honest, I got a bit confused between the characters. Even so, it was still quite a nice and easy read.
Duolingo
My Duolingo streak is still going strong, and I passed 1700 days recently. If you want to follow me you can do so here. I’ve got an upcoming trip to somewhere exciting so have pivoted from my typical Spanish and Portuguese lessons.
Personal finances
Income
Currently I’m working part-time at the university and my post-tax income is £2250.25 per month. At the moment I’m not claiming a salary at the spin-out company.
Savings
After a rocky financial start to the year where my savings barely grew at all, I’m pleased that over the past three months my savings went up by £4585. As always this is despite a growing number of donations, and ongoing efforts to ensure my money is only being put to work for things I actually support. In the context of crappy political events (including most importantly, complicity in collective punishment and probable genocide) this has meant several changes.
I’m hesitant around my longer term investment strategy so for now have some money in money markets – sort of like savings accounts but on the stock market.
Summary & plans
I need to get better at saying no, and ring fencing my time: both for the important parts of my day job, and for my personal life. And to enjoy the summer!
If you’re in the northern hemisphere I hope you have a great summer too.
If you enjoyed this post be sure to take a look at previous updates in the Beyond the PhD Series.
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Always a pleasure reading your updates! Please keep the content coming, even if the numbers don’t always reflect it. Some of us truly look forward to your blog posts.
P.S. Would love to see a post on applying for postdoc positions or fellowships!
Thanks so much for your continued support, Afiya! It’s certainly motivating to receive supportive messages like this. 🙂
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll create a post on that topic. Best wishes!