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.  

Survey summary

The EASTBIO Management Group invites all EASTBIO-funded students to complete the annual student survey anonymously by 5pm on the 28^th 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.

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

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:

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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!