After what has felt like a rather long winter we’ve finally reached spring, perhaps my favourite time of year.
In this post I’ll share some updates on what I’ve been up to the past few months, including attending a couple of conferences in countries I’d not visited before, a quick blog update and what I’ve been working on in my spare time.
For previous monthly updates see here: Beyond the PhD Series.
Work
Postdoc job
Publications & Conferences
This year hasn’t been as productive as I’d hoped so far, as between January and March I didn’t submit any new work to journals or conferences. However, I did have a few opportunities to go and present work at conferences I mentioned in the last update from 2023. As always I paid to offset the flights for these trips with Gold Standard.
1. Norway – Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference (NLDL)
In January I went to Tromsø in Norway to present some work I was leading, TraCE, at NLDL 2024.
I don’t think I’d actually presented my own work at an in-person conference since presenting PhD work back in 2019. This is probably why I ended up feeling more nervous than I’d expected to be. The presentation was on the final day of the conference too, which I’m never a big fan of but someone has to be near the end! Thankfully my anxiety was all for nothing and everything went smoothly.
I usually prefer going to conferences alone, and still think that it is important to go off and speak to new people, but it was fun hanging out with four other people from the research group I work in.
As with pretty much every trip to a conference, I extended it for 4-5 days and my girlfriend joined me for a bit of a holiday.
Chasing the Northern Lights
It turns out that Tromsø is a hotspot for seeing the Northern Lights and given the name of the conference I was hopeful that we’d see them. Some people saw them by leaving midway through the conference dinner, but knowing that I had another week or so in the city I decided to stay at the dinner.
As a side note, by chance I was seated next to the partner of someone who was in the same research group as where I did my PhD. This felt like a particularly strange coincidence considering that I’ve pivoted now to a completely different research field!
For a few nights after the conference dinner I was kicking myself because we had cloudy weather and no luck seeing the Northern Lights. After my girlfriend arrived we went out on a few organised tours where you go out in a van and drive to different areas to try and get clear skies to boost the chances of a sighting.
Although Tromsø itself was relatively warm (a few degrees below freezing), the surrounding areas got rather cold (well into the minus 20s!). Despite wearing all of my layers, a snow suit, hand and feet warmers I was still the coldest I’ve ever been. To make matters worse we saw practically nothing. Furthermore, due to being up most of the night on these tours I was worn out during the day times, so all in all they were a disappointment.
Below are a couple of pictures from our second tour. The photographs show the aurora but to the naked eye the green wisps just looked like grey clouds!
Thankfully on our final night, after going to an amazing swimming pool (if you find yourself in Tromsø, do yourself a favour and go!) we spotted a bit of Northern Lights activity in the sky while waiting for a bus back to the city centre.
Sure enough, the activity kept getting better and we decided to go straight up a cable car to a mountain overlooking the city. What resulted was an amazing light show over the city. This time the lights were definitely visible and definitely green!
Having expected to go back to our accommodation I’d not prepared to be outside on the top of a mountain, so I once again got pretty cold and had to head into the cafe a few times to warm up. By the time we got home our towels from swimming were frozen solid in our bags!
The Northern Lights activity carried on into the night and we could see it all from our accommodation, which felt ironic having spent the last few nights venturing far and wide from the city to see them with no luck!
2. Canada – AAAI 2024
In February I had the opportunity to go to Vancouver, Canada to present some work carried out by a final year undergraduate student I was supervising last year. To be clear, I went because they were no longer at the university and were now working in industry. The work was accepted at a workshop at AAAI 2024.
I’d been to the same conference, and workshop, at the previous edition of the conference last year in Washington D.C. Last year’s was a nice excuse to see a friend who had recently moved from London to Washington, but I didn’t rate the conference that highly. However this year I made use of the Whova app that the conference was advertising.
This app was a complete game changer because it meant that you could easily keep track of the schedule but also very easily meet like-minded people.
I went to meet-ups at coffee breaks and after the day’s conference that people had organised through the app to discuss certain research topics; went for drinks long into the night with people from the conference wanting to socialise as well as a few hikes with people wanting to explore outside of the city. Without the app the conference would have been a completely different experience.
Again I decided to stay for another 4-5 days after the conference to have more of an opportunity to see Vancouver and the surrounding area.
The weather wasn’t ideal but it was still nice, especially so because I spent the whole time hanging out with two German PhD students I’d met during the conference workshop. We went to an NHL ice hockey match, went on another hike, and visited different spots across the city. It made for a nice experience exploring the area with them and I hope to see them again!
Work and grants
In March I started work on a project I’m leading, to develop explainable AI for healthcare. This is for the grant I won at the end of last year.
I didn’t submit any new grant applications over this period, and must admit I generally felt quite unproductive outside of the trips to conferences. This wasn’t helped by feeling a bit run down. Going to conferences, mixing with lots of people and going out for drinks late into the night isn’t a great combination for staying healthy!
Over this period I was also on the program committee for this conference workshop, which is just a fancy way of saying I reviewed 3-4 papers for them. I don’t like to overcommit responsibilities for reviewing and usually only do it once or twice per year.
Spin-out
We’ve been making good progress at the spin-out company, I will perhaps share more in the future.
The Savvy Scientist website
New posts
Since the last Beyond the PhD post I’ve published three articles:
- How to Stay Healthy as a Student
- Thesis Title: Examples and Suggestions from a PhD Grad
- How to Master Data Management in Research
I also updated the figures and graphics for the following post to bring it up to date: PhD Salary UK: How Much Do PhD Students Get Paid Compared to Graduates?
I won’t bother saying what I always say about having not posted as much as I’d have liked: I’ll just say that I did spend about one month of this time out of the country related to the above conferences!
Website traffic
Weekly users:
Going in the right direction again. 🙂
The renewed traffic seems to have generated some recent interest in my one-to-one PhD coaching sessions. I don’t like pushing these much because:
- I want the free resources available to everyone to remain my focus;
- I’m busy enough as it is!
However, I have enjoyed helping out a few people recently.
Time off
DIY
I’ve wanted to add more dimension to my garden, and have for a long time wanted an arch that I could walk under.
My long term vision for what I really want is to have edible plants everywhere in the garden so that I can wander round, picking and eating fruit as I go.
Something a bit like in Willy Wonka’s factory, just a bit more healthy.
At the start of the year I made an arch/frame to grow some blackberries and a flowering non-edible plant (I’m working on switching over to everything being edible!) over a path in my garden.
I made it from some scrap wood I got for free a few years ago. It’s now painted and ready to be installed which I’ll do as soon as the weather gets a bit better. I’ll share a picture once it is installed.
Yoga / Stretching
I’m still doing “yoga” pretty much daily since last August but my current focus has been on my feet and flexibility. I’m not sure if it all strictly counts as yoga, but in any case it’s good. At the moment I’m doing it at the end of the day just before bed.
Cooking
For my birthday I was given a voucher to go to a vegan cooking class which was great fun and the food was delicious. Now I want to buy a pasta machine!
We’ve been making homemade burgers for a while now and in February turned it up a notch by also making burger rolls. IMO not worth it, we’ll stick to just making the burger patties!
Volunteering / Activism
I started volunteering as a steward at Palestine solidarity marches. I continue to struggle with the situation but feel a little better at doing something, however small, compared to feeling completely hopeless. It’s been a nice way to connect with people too.
I was a little hesitant to share this and I don’t often mention when I get involved with politicised causes. But I now realise that it is incumbent on all of us to take a stand where we feel it is appropriate, especially when our governments and other organisations are not doing their duties. Perhaps me sharing this here will push someone who is staying silent into making themselves heard.
Media I’ve consumed
Books
All the Light We Cannot See – best book I’ve read in a while. Poignant and slightly difficult read at times given what is currently going on in Palestine.
Films
Someone Like Me (link to watch it on YouTube) – I watched this documentary, based in Vancouver, while on the flight there. Always good to have an insight into other people’s experience.
Podcasts
- Huberman interview with Cal Newport. Some useful advise on productivity. deep work guy podcast
- Ali Abdaal interview, again covering productivity. “What would this look like if it were fun?”
Personal finances
Income
- Postdoc – my take-home pay is around £2000/month since I’m now part time. My full time equivalent salary for this role would be around £48k (Bristol pay scales are available here), and I work 80% hours.
- Spin-out – I’m now getting paid around £1030/month (£1500 pre tax) for this role.
- PhD coaching – I did a few of these, earning me around £90 over the 3 months.
Savings
I’ve further increased my charity donations. I’ve not added them up but I expect they’re around £250 per month. Which to me feels like the least I can do for certain causes.
Despite higher outgoings, in Jan-March 2024 I saved £6944.97: an average of £2314.99 per month. Which appears like I saved approx 75% of my income.
However this isn’t really the case, since I already have existing savings and these increases are largely the performance of existing investments, not from new savings. I’m not actually sure how much I’m saving per month but it is certainly less than 75% of my income!
Summary & plans
Last year I set myself the aim of doing a research visit abroad. Conferences aren’t quite what I had in mind, but they still provide an opportunity to visit somewhere new and talk research, and I’m already off to a good start this year for them.
I’ve also been laying the foundations for a potential research visit or two. Watch this space.
I hope you’ve had a great start to 2024. Make sure to check out previous posts in the Beyond the PhD Series and you can subscribe below to be notified of new content:
