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The life and times of a PhD student…

May 13, 2015 By Silke Jensen Leave a Comment

It cannot be denied, the life of a PhD student is tough.

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As I’m writing this, my desk is covered in papers involving calculus (something I thought I’d seen the last of when I did my A levels a……few…..years ago). I’m simultaneously analysing the data of my first experiment according to Signal Detection Theory, recruiting and testing for my second experiment, and coding the third … and also working on my probation review report (if you were a pantomime audience you’d all be going “Awwwww, poor Silke” right about now).

But that’s not all! All of the above is just my ‘main job’ – but academia is so much more! You probably noticed that the INTREPID gang is pretty active when it comes to research dissemination, but when you’re doing a PhD your department also wants you to get involved. Sooo last week I gave a talk on my project to the Vision and Language lab, and tomorrow I’m doing a double act, presenting my research in a talk and on a poster to the School of Psychology at Café Psychologie, an annual event for all first-year PhD students to introduce themselves and their research to their department. I’m really glad to be participating in these activities, as they provide me with the opportunity to receive valuable feedback from psychologists and vision scientists. It’s something that is really important to me, as I feel like over the past months I’ve been mainly involved with the forensic and fingerprint community – who’ve been amazingly encouraging and inspiring, but coming from a visual perception background I also want to know what people from that area think of my approach to this project. This seems to be one of the challenges in interdisciplinary research – getting the balance right.

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Whilst I’m analysing, testing, coding, writing and presenting, I also need to make sure that my research skills are up to scratch. If I want my research to be innovative, I need to make sure I keep up to date with the latest technologies to see if I can benefit from them. Now, if you study visual perception one thing you’ll be spending a lot of time doing is coding experiments. Many people in this area use MATLAB and the designated Psychtoolbox, but over the past 10 years or so Jon Peirce at Nottingham University has made incredible progress developing Psychopy, a Python-based application researchers can use to present stimuli and collect data. One great advantage of Psychopy (and Python) is that they’re license-free, which provides researchers with more flexibility to take their research out of the lab. Towards the end of April, Francisco and I attended a 3-day workshop on Psychopy, run by Jon Peirce himself at the stunning campus of the University of Nottingham. It was an intense three days, we got through the basics of programming to coding our first experiment by Day Two, as well as brief introductions to data analysis, graphs, image processing, some general Python code, all the while fuelled by probably more coffee than I’ve ever had in a lifetime 😉 Overall a tough but rewarding experience: not only did I learn much about coding, Python and Psychopy but I also met some great people.

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But don’t be fooled: doing a PhD involves more than just enjoying the sun by a beautiful lake and drinking tonnes of coffee. When I’m not doing workshops, preparing research presentations, writing reports, coding experiments, testing participants or analysing data (this is starting to feel like ‘The 12 days of Christmas’), myself and the other INTREPID guys are being trained in Forensic Theories and Skills. Now that is a really difficult and boring training module.

CAM00667 Photo Credit to Thalassa

Yep, you should really feel sorry for us. They’re forcing us to attend fire investigation demonstrations. Where they set a furnished container on fire to teach us about reading the fire scene, preservation and collection of evidence…

CAM00712 Photo Credit to Thalassa

Fire investigation demos involving Jack the accelerant-sniffer dog, who has to wear teeny tiny boots to protect his paws from glass!

Photo Credit to Thalassa

It simply cannot be denied: The life of a PhD student is really, really tough…

PS: Thanks to Thalassa for sharing her great quality pics with us (the low-res ones can be credited to my phone..)


 

Looking forward to: Crime Scene Investigation Practical; brightening up the garden (like a grown-up)

Listening to: Bark & Baker; Seu Jorge

Reading: J.R.R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings; Terry Pratchett – A Blink of the Screen

Tagged With: arson investigation, coding, Criminology, CSI, fingerprints, INTREPID Forensics, Jack the dog, Jon Peirce, PhD musings, psychology, Psychopy, Python, University of Leicester, vision and language lab, visual perception

Back to work, aka lessons in self-discipline

January 22, 2015 By Silke Jensen 4 Comments

So, after a lovely Christmas break I returned from this

  Christmas tree Ponte dei sospiri


to this

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[Read more…]

Tagged With: back to work, coding, Criminology, discipline, fingerprints, holidays, INTREPID Forensics, Matlab, procrastination, programming, psychology, psychophysics, vision

Not sure if there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, but at least we’ve found the entrance…

December 16, 2014 By Silke Jensen Leave a Comment

“What did you do today?”

For the first few weeks since starting my PhD this question, usually asked by my parents via the phone or my boyfriend when I get home in the evenings, was met with a mix of panic, exasperation and evasiveness.

The thing is, many people start their PhD after having carefully crafted and researched a very specific area, and have a good base to start from and an idea of where they are heading to. Our INTREPID group, however, was presented with research proposals already sanctioned by the EU. You’d think that’d make things very easy, all you have to do is some background reading and then you’re ready to experiment. But no – as I found out in my first week, the proposals are veeeery vague…and we, as the PhD students, have the job to make the project our own by pointing out interesting areas and questions.

What followed was a lot of reading, leading to more questions than answers, which lead to more reading, more confusion, more reading… luckily meetings with my supervisors as well as my fellow fingerprint companions Francisco and Etienne helped keep my head from exploding.

But this month all of that changed for the better! [Read more…]

Tagged With: coding, experiment, fingerprints, INTREPID Forensics, London, Matlab, psychology, vision

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