As a new face to the Geomicro team, I thought I’d try my hand at blogging about the recent Winter School that myself and fellow PhD newbie Kat Dungan attended as part of our Next Generation Nuclear (NGN) CDT.
The panel from the discussion ‘Does the World have a Nuclear Future? [Left to right – Paul Gilchrist (Jacobs), Duncan McLaren (McLaren Environmental), Francis Livens (UoM) & Juan Matthews (UoM)] – Picture by Sarah HeathThe itinerary was jam-packed with content including presentations from PhD students on their work, panel discussions on the position of nuclear power in today’s climate, appearances from field-leading academic and industrial representatives, and even an ex-politician!
A personal highlight for me was the appearance of Dr Susan Molyneux-Hodgson from the University of Sheffield, giving a slightly different approach to the nuclear theme by examining the sociological aspects of the industry. This alternate angle on the issues of nuclear power really helped in contextualising how the science we’d be developing in our PhDs will fit into the real world.
A busy poster presentation session with plenty of free beer! – Picture by Sarah Heath
Inevitably, it wasn’t all work, with a rather competitive quiz night and some excellent ‘networking’ trips to the pub taking place over the course of the trip.
All-in-all, the trip was an excellent way to meet many new faces from academia and industry alike, whilst rounding off the first section of my PhD in a very enjoyable fashion!
If you’d like to know more about the NGN or ICO CDTs, just follow the links provided.
Some of NGN Cohort 2 enjoying the networking aspects of Winter School (including myself providing an armrest for Kat).
By Luke Townsend
The microorganisms that inhabit the spent nuclear fuel ponds (SNFPs) at the Sellafield site have been studied for over a decade using DNA-based techniques. By sampling the pond water, extracting DNA, and analysing it using Next Generation Sequencing, it is possible to identify the whole microbial community present in the SNFPs. The microorganisms that colonise […]
Hello! I’m Alison, I come from a town called Solihull in the West Midlands. I completed my undergraduate MSci (Hons) degree in geology from the University of Birmingham, specialising in the geochemistry of metasomatic fluid-rock interaction within an igneous complex. After graduating I spent some time in the Prairies of Canada, studying the controls on […]
In early June, I had the opportunity to attend “The geochemistry and mineralogy of contaminated environments” meeting, held at Burlington House in London. This was the first ever joint meeting between the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Environmental Chemistry Group and the UK & Ireland Mineralogical Society’s Environmental Mineralogy Group. There was good representation from the […]
The first Women in Environmental Science (WiES) workshop was hosted by the University of Manchester last 13th of June. Dozens of attendants participated in this event; a vast majority of them were women, although the event did not discriminate any gender. Moreover, women from all sorts of environmentally-related backgrounds participated, from academy to industry. There […]