I only have to glance outside to see that Spring is truly underway and somehow we’ve already reached May. But it’s been a jam-packed start to the year so I have quite a bit to update you on. I went to the US for a conference, I’m now officially a co-founder of a spin-out company and I also have some paper and grant announcements.
Read on for more details about these and other part of my life since finishing my PhD three years ago.
If you enjoy these posts, you can catch up on the previous parts in my Beyond the PhD series.
Academic work
Postdoc 1: University of Bath
Grants
I’m very happy to finally be able to share that a sizeable grant I’m co-investigator on has officially been announced:
- Bath NHS trust to test AI’s ability to identify blood clots in patients
- New £830k project with Bath hospital set to explore AI detection of blood clots
- RUH awarded £830,000 for artificial intelligence research trial
Led by collaborators at a local hospital, the grant includes money for the university I used to work at to fund a postdoc for a few years. Originally this would have been me, but given that it took about 18 months because of delays in the decision for the grant, we’ll be hiring someone new. This is by far the biggest grant I have on my CV.
Spin-out company formation
The first three months of 2023 have been filled with lots of paperwork, emails and meetings with lawyers. For anyone joining for the first time: Along with some colleagues, I’ve trying to form a company to commercialise some technology I developed as a postdoc.
The situation is a little more complicated than normal because not only are the university a part of the process but also the local hospital who were mentioned in the last section. This means two big institutions and two sets of lawyers to deal with.
It has been slow going but near the end of March we got all the paperwork signed and submitted.
This now means that I’m officially co-founder, director, chief technology officer and shareholder in our spin-out company. From now on I’ll rebrand updates for this section of the posts to spin-out company. Exciting 😊
Postdoc 2: University of Bristol
Publications
1. Healthcare
An abstract, led by another postdoc, was accepted to a workshop for presentation at the AAAI conference in Washington DC. More on the conference in a moment. The extended abstract is available here and will soon be published in a book. It sounds weird to me to publish something in a book but as long as the final version is available online I suspect it doesn’t really matter where it is published. We’re also now working to extend the work to submit it to a special issue of a journal, so I’ll hopefully be able to share an update on that in the next quarterly post.
2. Environment
I submitted an abstract, suggesting a new potential piece of work which I’ve not yet carried out, in the proposals submission category to an environmental workshop at one of the biggest AI conferences. “Proposals” seem like a relatively rare submission category, but seem ideal for ideas you have but want some feedback on first, such as the case with this work.
The workshop organisers offered a mentoring scheme to help people with submissions, which I took part in and would wholeheartedly recommend. The mentor I was matched with was fantastic and helped a lot.
On the day the outcomes were announced I excitedly opened my emails, logged in to the review system and was met with reviews in the following order:
- Weak accept (poster)
- Strong accept (oral)
- Strong accept (oral) – by this point I was feeling pretty buoyant
- Strong reject
I felt pretty deflated at first, not least because three of the reviewers agreed that the work was interesting and that this workshop was the right venue to discuss it. I somewhat understand where reviewer 4’s concerns were coming from but it’s a bit frustrating with these systems that often the decision is final, with no route to address reviewers’ concerns. Honestly, I remain a bit peeved off about not being able to respond but will turn it into a positive by either 1) submitting a reworked version of the proposal to another conference 2) just getting on and doing the actual work (then submitting a full paper).
US travel
Conference
As mentioned above, an abstract led by another postdoc was accepted to a workshop at the AAAI conference in Washington DC. The grant funding the research was coming to an end and had some spare travel funds, so fortunately I was able to attend too.
As with all my international travel I personally paid to offset emissions with Gold Standard. Offsetting three tonnes (most than my expected travel) costs about £30. It may be that the university would cover it but either way I’m more than happy to pay this small price.
I’d not been to the US for a conference before and had heard good things about this one. We were there for the four days of the main conference, two days of tutorials/labs before hand and two days of workshops afterwards, which is where our abstract was to be presented. Eight days in a row at a conference was exhausting!
With the lead author present I didn’t get involved with presenting any of the work. However, unexpectedly a PhD student from Bristol couldn’t attend so I did end up giving the oral presentation (and poster demo) for their work. It’s kind of weird presenting something when you’ve not been at all involved with the work!
The conference was pretty good but I don’t think any of us were expecting for it to be such a hybrid event. Given that our workshop organisers insisted that all presentations must be given in person, it was surprising that so few presenters were present in-person during the main conference.
One upside of this was that with so many sessions pre-recorded and available to watch at a later point in time, it took pressure off deciding which sessions to attend. I therefore tried to prioritise opportunities for networking and in-person talks.
Hackathon
The same workshop that a few colleagues and I were already going to was running a hackathon.
None of us had entered one before and since we were already going to the conference it seems like a nice additional thing to do to make more of the trip. Also most of us hadn’t studied biological aging before so it seemed like a nice opportunity.
The setup wasn’t what I was expecting of a hackathon. When I think of hackathons I imagine something spread over only ~48 hours where people are working long hours on a prototype. This was a bit different, where we were given a topic and had about three weeks to write and submit an abstract which we could then present at the in-person workshop.
I presented the work and was actually a bit nervous. It was my first time presenting anything in-person in over three years.
We got third prize which came with a $250 cash prize (split four ways). I tend to set myself too high standards and truthfully was a bit disappointed at the time.
Why was I disappointed in getting third prize in our first hackathon? Well of the ~30 teams that registered, only 5 teams actually presented and were therefore eligible for a prize! We’re now writing up the work for submission to a special issue of the same journal as the other healthcare abstract so hopefully we’ll also all have a paper out of it.
This should be yet more proof that you have to be in it to win it, which I’ve written two posts about:
- How to make the most of opportunities
- How I ended up on a desert island after taking an opportunity in an email
US social life
A friend from Imperial moved to Washington DC about six months ago so going to the conference gave me an opportunity to see them in person for the first time since before the pandemic.
I stayed with them for a few days before and after the conference and was lucky to get a tour of the city, watched the Super Bowl at a house party and went to a few birthday parties I was graciously invited to, despite not knowing the people whose birthdays it was. It made me realise how I really ought to work on my social life in Bristol since it is fun meeting new people.
Boston & Cambridge
As someone who likes to make the most of opportunities, especially when flying somewhere, a few weeks before the trip I told my boss that I was keen to extend my trip in the US for a little bit so that I could go to another city.
With a bit of funding available I was able to travel from Washington DC to Boston for a few days and met up with some people, none of whom I’d previously met in person and some I’d never spoken to before:
- A Harvard masters student I’d connected with on LinkedIn a few years ago and who asked me for a video call about a year ago to discuss AI in healthcare. We met for a coffee and I got a tour around Harvard.
- Lunch with lots of PhD students and postdocs from a Harvard group who do work which aligns with many of my own research interests and passions. Moving to the US isn’t my first choice but it did start me thinking about it… I got introduced to a PhD student in this group last year by asking my LinkedIn contact for other people to connect with working this field. Networking, yay. By way of letting the group know that I’d be there the PhD student had emailed around a link to this website which many of them said they’d started reading, so hi if any of you are reading this!
- Meeting with an MIT PhD student who I cold-emailed out of the blue while I was in Boston just the day before. They were gracious enough to take time to give me a tour of the campus and invited me to a departmental social event.
This all served as a reminder to me of how open people can be to networking, so if there is someone who does interesting work do reach out to them.
The train back to Washington DC took about eight hours but the views were lovely and we went through New York and Philadelphia. By this point in the trip I was pretty exhausted and had to fight the urge to squeeze even more out of the trip by stopping off anywhere else.
Interns
Between January and March our group welcomed a few paid interns. One of them worked on a project idea I’d had last year. It is really nice to work with new people, especially when they’re helping to bring an idea to life. They’re finished now but I’m keen over the next three months to work on the idea some more before hopefully submitting it to a conference or journal.
Second Hackathon
Right near the end of March I went to Cambridge (the UK one this time!) for a hackathon, working on improving satellite measurement resolution. It’s fun getting to meet new people and potential collaborations. No prizes on offer for this one, purely for networking and skills building.
Grants
I applied for £5k of internal “pump priming” funding for a new project using AI between health and environmental outcomes. In February I found out that we were successful and have a postdoc working on it from April.
It is only for 6 weeks of funding so we must be very focussed and realistic with what we can achieve in the timescale. I’m very happy to get the opportunity to lead projects which branch out from healthcare, which is what I’ve worked on for about 10 years, into environmental projects which is something that I want to do more of.
PhD papers
I’m pleased to share that a PhD student I worked with during my own PhD published a paper recently and it includes some work we did together. Paper available here.
I still have one more paper from my own PhD I’m keen to publish. Yet I find it hard to justify working on that when I already have so many potential papers on the go in my current job.
Generally, I’ve been pretty good at getting projects finished and a paper from them but it is always tempting to focus on current and upcoming projects rather than finish old ones. Anyone reading this got any tips?
The Savvy Scientist website
New posts
Since January four posts have gone live:
- Beyond the PhD: July to December 2022
- How to Stop Procrastinating and Start Studying
- How To Get A Fully Funded PhD Scholarship
- STEM Volunteering Opportunities in the UK
I’m still publishing at a lower frequency than I’d like but:
- It’s an improvement compared to last year
- I’ve been busy travelling etc so don’t want to give myself too much of a hard time!
Website traffic
At the end of last year I switched the hosting platform for this website and to my horror traffic to the website seemed to dramatically drop.
I’m relieved to share that it is now resolved and wasn’t actually a drop in visitors, just a plugin messing up the stats.
Early this year the website passed 250,000 total site visits since I started it, and we’re well on track for over 150,000 this year.
Time off
Food growing
With warmer weather on the horizon we started off some seeds for various vegetables and flowers. In a few months we should have some decently sized plants and not long after some food to harvest.
Wildlife
I wanted to encourage more birds into the garden so decided to buy a few bird feeders and different types of bird food. The food gets cheaper when you buy it in bulk, so buoyed on by my girlfriend we ended up spending £170 in total. The 60kg of seed we ordered should keep the local birds going for a while!!
In London I was part of a community gardening project who also created some amazing wildflower meadows on a local green space. I decided to take inspiration from this to start trying to create a miniaturised version on only a few square metres of land we maintain near my house. I’ve spent hours meticulously clearing the land and so will soon be putting down the native wildflower seed. Even if it is a small area it should be better than nothing I hope.
Baking
We belatedly made a gingerbread house from a kit we got at Christmas. And some lemon cupcakes, also from a kit received at Christmas. To vegan-ise them, we had to improvise and make some vegan lemon curd which actually turned out really well. So well in fact that even when my girlfriend mistook it for katsu curry sauce and accidently poured it all over her rice, it was still rather tasty. Good to know.
We also tried making pizza for the first time in our airfryer, which was a bit of a challenge and didn’t go too well.
Media I’ve consumed
Books
I don’t really do new years resolutions but I did set myself the aim of reading less books. Yes you read that correctly! Last year I was finding that reading two books per month was putting myself under some unnecessary pressure. It meant that I was prioritising reading over other things such as writing for this blog.
January
All That is Solid Melts Into Air – Darragh McKean. I enjoyed this historical fiction book a lot. It has an engaging storyline and provides an opportunity to learn about Chernobyl and life in the Soviet Union. A book worth reading in my opinion.
February
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin. I finished reading this whilst staying in Boston, on the eve of meetings at both Harvard and MIT, which both play a part in the book. I enjoyed parts of the book but it felt overly cliché and frankly basic which made it pretty boring and predictable. Not my favourite book.
The glass flowers exhibit at Harvard’s museum of natural history on the other hand, which gets a mention in the book, is well worth paying to see. It was amazing.
March
The Phone Box at the Edge of the World – Laura Imai Messina, Lucy Rand (Translator). It wasn’t intentional to read two books around disasters (Chernobyl and now Japan’s 2011 tsunami) so close together. However both books were great. This one is very slow and chilled so makes for a nice break from work and probably also therapeutic for those who’ve recently lost someone.
Articles
100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying. As with all of these lists, there are many bits of solid advice and a few I definitely don’t agree with. I started writing a list of my favourites but there were too many so I suggest just reading the article!
Videos / Films
Witness for the Prosecution. Great film which I enjoyed a lot. Lots of twists. Worth a watch. I’m a big fan of 12 Angry Men and would recommend that too.
Memento. A bit confusing at first but an interesting concept with good execution.
Torn. I watched this while on plane to the US. Don’t take life for granted, it is precious. Also, be mindful of risks!
This motivating video:
Podcasts
Huberman Lab – I started listening to this after a few people recommended it to me. The episodes are crazy long (2-3 hours each) so I’ve not listened to many. The key point so far seems to be: Get outside early in the day to get sunlight into your eyes.
Monthly finances
Income
Postdoc (University of Bristol) around +£2350 per month
We got a ~3% payrise, part of which has come into force and the rest will be in August.
Website around £95 over this period
I’ve started offering a small number of one to one sessions. A few people have taken me up on them and I’ve helped on things such as PhD applications when pivoting to a different field through to mock interviews.
Savings
With such high inflation and growing interest rates I’ve been trying to move some savings around to maximise returns so that they’re value doesn’t get quite so eroded. I’m still investing a bit in the stock market every month (around £300) but also making use of some of the 5% (or higher) bank accounts that are now appearing.
Reflections and plans
Although they are a bit of effort to write I do like these posts because they help me to see monthly progress. I’m pretty happy with how things are going and I’m looking forward to sharing progress in future posts. Wishing you all well.
If you enjoy these posts, you can catch up on the previous parts in my Beyond the PhD series.
Subscribe for access to my free resource library here:
