News Archive

3 Jan 2024

Dr Jennifer Wardle, EASTBIO alumna and DCDF awardee, presented her DCDF project "What links soil nutrients to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?" at the 2023 British Society of Soil Science (BSSS) ECR conference in Belfast.

The project details can also be found here, and also did a presentation about the project to a https://seachange41.wordpress.com/ hosted by local activist group SeaChange.

1 Nov 2023

Thank you to those who completed the 2023 Student Survey, which closed at the end of May 2023. About 40% of the total EASTBIO student population provided feedback on the DTP, its processes, and governance. 

The Training and Development Sub-Committee has discussed this feedback in great detail, highlighting priority areas, and producing a proposal of changes to the programme, and response to students highlighting these changes, which was put to the wider management group for implementation and approval.

You can find the Management Group response to the Student Survey here.

Please get in touch with us if you want to discuss this further with us or with your student reps or if you think there are still questions we haven’t asked, areas we haven’t covered, or measures still to be taken to address concerns.

12 Sep 2023

12 undergraduate candidates undertook summer Research Experience Placements across the EASTBIO partner institutions of Aberdeen, Edinburgh and SRUC. Each student was asked to produce a report detailing their research and experience in whatever format they choose. 

 "The impact of anti-diabetic therapy on susceptibility to fungal infection" - Piotr Kruc with Professor Heather Wilson (University of Aberdeen)

"Investigation of a novel class of protozoan and fungal transmembrane proteins" - Kevin Woo with Dr Jelena Baranovic (University of Edinburgh, CSE)

26 Jun 2023

We are delighted to announce that Amy Newell (2021 intake), Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences has been awarded an SCI scholarship of £5,000 over two years to support her in her studies in plant photobiology. Amy welcomed this opportunity with this statement: “I feel very honoured to have been awarded a SCI scholarship for the last two years of my PhD. With this scholarship I will be able me to travel to conferences and hopefully visit other labs in my field. I am very excited about the further networking and learning opportunities that this scholarship will enable.”

In addition to the scholarship, Amy will benefit from publishing opportunities, access to a high-calibre network to help launch her career, and opportunities to present her work and raise her profile within the scientific community.  

1 Jun 2023

 

Browse the EASTBIO June Newsletter here.


From the EASTBIO REP Induction Day - Student Q&A Session (Dundee, 22 May 2023)

1 May 2023

Survey summary

The EASTBIO Management Group invites all EASTBIO-funded students to complete the annual student survey anonymously by 5pm on the 28th of May 2023. Although the survey is anonymous, there is an option, should you wish to take it, to provide your name/email to allow us to approach you with an invitation to provide more detailed information on your feedback (this can be on a specific area, for instance training; studentship; placements; wellbeing). This will allow us to deepen our understanding of the student experience of the programme and qualify the broad evidence, in case of a need for more local measures. We plan to run an annual survey each year from now onwards within the same terms of reference.

10 Nov 2022

 

Third-year EASTBIO student Samuel Gibbon (Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh/CMVM) has started a company called Pallor Metrics, based on his PhD work on "Using the eye to unlock changes in the health of the aging brain: A state of the art data analysis approach".

enabling insight into brain health through imaging the retina

20 Sep 2022

The University of St Andrews currently advertises one EASTBIO PhD project for a studentship in the area of Crops and Soil. The studentship is fully funded by the UKRI BBSRC. The successful candidate will join the 2022 student cohort and the new EASTBIO Training Programme.

Project title: Crops as a route to growth factor (GF) production for cellular agriculture

Project Supervisors: Professor L. Torrance, Dr Andrew Love, Professor D. Stewart

Details of the projects are advertised here.

Closing date: 30 September 2022

You are asked to contact the project's first supervisor before you apply to the host institution.

14 Sep 2022

The Roslin Institute (University of Edinburgh, College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine) currently advertises four EASTBIO PhD projects for one studentship in the area of Transformative Technologies. The studentship is fully funded by the UKRI BBSRC; the successful candidate will join the 2022 student cohort and the new EASTBIOTraining Programme.

Details of the projects here:

7 Sep 2022

EASTBIO DTP Partner institution Moredun Research Institute advertises a PhD project for a start in October 2022. The project is fully-funded for a 4-year programme of study and the successful applicant will be joining the EASTBIO Training Programme.

Project title: Living with parasites: exploring tolerance of infection to reduce the impact of gastrointestinal nematodes on sheep

Primary supervisorDr Adam Hayward, Moredun Research Institute

Closing Date: 21/09/2022

Details of project here.

1 Sep 2022

EASTBIO has launched its 2023 Call for Projects inviting PhD projects in areas of strategic priority for UKRI BBSRC by eligible PIs across the partnership. We asked for projects for both standard studentships and studentships collaborative with industry.

Details about the call - including relevant guidance and the form itself - can be found here; projects to be submitted via the partner institutions by the end of September 2022. 

Email us if you have any query regarding the call.

12 Jul 2022

In 2022, EASTBIO has awarded two UKRI BBSRC Doctoral Career Development Funds to the following former EASTBIO students:

First, Dr Jennifer Wardle who has been working with Professor Jo Smith at the University of Aberdeen, School of Biological Sciences on the project involving the production of an "interactive web resource mapping urban food growing locations around Aberdeen with pop-up quantitative and qualitative information about the soils found there" (April to August 2022). The project falls under the 3rd BBSRC strand of exploring the application of Jennifer's doctoral research and training beyond academia for economic or societal impact in other sectors: it establishes connections with key and periphery participants in urban growing activities; provides laboratory characterisation of soil samples from a range of urban food growing sites and includes interviews of soil keepers.
 

30 Jun 2022

Dr Charlotte Woolley -  who was among the EASTBIO-funded 2017 intake - is currently post-doctoral researcher at The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies (RDSVS) and the Roslin Institute of the University of Edinburgh, funded by the Dogs Trust to investigate lifestyle risks for healthy aging in a dog population. Charlotte is also the course organiser for the Research Methods and Data Analysis course on the online MSc Equine Science. Her research interests include veterinary and human epidemiology, data science, microbiome and genetic research. Outside of academic life, Charlotte has a 16-month old little girl who keeps her very busy and 2 ragdoll cats. She enjoys big hikes in the hills, running, Netflix, home renovations, craft beers and wine. 

30 Jun 2022

 

Dr Stefan Pulver (University of St Andrews) and EASTBIO Alumnus Dr Jacob Francis (2017 intake) have been awarded a BBSRC Impact Acceleration Award for  £23,593, providing 5 months of PDRA funding (from August to December 2022) for Jacob to work with Cairn Research Ltd to commercialize/disseminate his BBSRC DTP work on developing Open Source Software for microscopy. Cairn has also confirmed that they will provide funding for an additional month to support this work full-time. This is a formidable example of the kind of beneficial extensions arise from academia-industry collaboration at PhD and placement level, as supported by the EASTBIO DTP CASE studentships scheme.

EASTBIO DTP offers our congratulations to both Stefan and Jacob for securing these funds and wish them best of luck with their project!
 
 

30 Jun 2022

EASTBIO awarded ten REP awards for summer 2022 placements, the details of which are found here.

We have met all our REP recipients in Dundee at the 2-day Swimming Research Waters Induction, engaged in conversation with them, EASTBIO supervisors as well as current and former EASTBIO students. We'll bring the cohort together again in autumn 2022 to learn more about their lab placement experience and facilitate more interactions with our current PhD student cohorts. 

7 Jun 2022

Lorenzo Croce is a first-year PhD student at the University of Aberdeen, working with Professor Peter McCaffery on a Collaborative project, "Rethinking the retinoic acid receptor: a revisionary view of the rapid pathways triggered."

28 Jun 2021

Dr Caroline Pope has sadly left the EASTBIO Doctoral Training Partnership and the University of Edinburgh Graduate School of Biological Sciences, to take up a new role at Eli Lilly in Cork -- her last working day with us was the 24th of June 2021. She has been a driving force for EASTBIO since it began in 2012 and, as the EASTBIO Doctoral Training and Industry Engagement Manager, was a major factor in successfully moving onto its current third stage.

7 May 2021

EASTBIO DTP understands the significant opportunity that its Undergraduate Research Experience Placements offers to undergraduate students who may wish to embark on a research career path. EASTBIO is committed to delivering the scheme. However, we will not be able to offer placements this year due to continued restrictions operating in many labs. The scheme will be re-launched in the summer of 2022, with additional awards to take into account those we have been unable to host in 2020 or 2021, and will include a programme of Widening Participation activities open to eligible applicants. We will advertise further details via our website in early 2022. 

EASTBIO DTP Management Group

9 Oct 2020

EASTBIO has just held its first entirely digital Induction event, spread between the 7th and the 9th of October. We thank our students and supervisors, our students reps and our support team and Management Group for helping to deliver and engage with this series of events that launches the EASTBIO DTP3 Training Programme.

We asked our new students to type one sentence about their PhD research and got the word cloud, below (thanks to Dr Mhairi Towler for sharing):

Let us know what you thought about the digital platforms we used for this key event and any suggestions about other media to enable interactions that mimic face-to-face events!

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