Ramblings of a Drug Discovery PhD student who should really be in the lab or writing her thesis.
I’ve been dabbling in various creative projects during UK lockdown to pass the time. This little project was inspired by embroidery Science A-Zs created by Lauren/@stitching_hew and Breann Abernathy/@biochemist.b on Instagram. Fiona holding up her finished A-Z cross stitch on an A5 panel of material Every morning (roughly!) in May, I asked my Instagram followers …
With a heatwave well under way in the south of the UK (which includes Brighton where I’m studying), folks are preparing for some serious heat! As a Scot, I do struggle with the southern climate compared to my baltic homeland. Towards the end of today we clocked on our thermometers it was 29 °C inside …
Continue reading "Six tips to survive a heatwave working in a chemistry lab"
This is the last year I’ll be spending in the lab before writing up my PhD next year. I thought it would be useful for me to blog where I am now and what I still need to do in terms of my research about once a quarter. Now that we’re at the end of …
Most people have a desk as a place of work. I’m lucky enough to have three workspaces as a chemist: my desk, my lab bench, and my fume hood, all for different aspects of chemistry research. Today I’m going to give you a tour around my lab bench! My lab bench is used to carry …
The second column elements of the periodic table are known as the alkali earth metals. They are like group 1 in that they are relatively soft metals that react with water to produce hydrogen gas however they don’t react as vigorously. This is due to the group 2 elements having 2 outer electrons instead of …
2019 marks the UN’s International Year of the Periodic Table or #IYPT. It’s 150 years since Dmitri Mendeleev presented his organisation of chemical elements to the world. The periodic table is used daily by chemists and other scientists as reference resource for the ingredients of the universe. Ancient Greeks defined “elements” as one of the …
Continue reading "What do the numbers on the periodic table mean?"
Over the course of a PhD, students are encouraged to leave the lab from time to time to go to conferences to learn about other kinds of research going on in their field. Science conferences gather researchers from academia and industry. In this post I will talk about the different conferences I went to in …
It’s Christmas Eve! I hope you’re all getting to enjoy the festivities in some way, whether you’re taking a break from research/work with family and friends or taking advantage of it being quiet to get work done - or a special shout out if you’re one of the superheroes that keep the emergency services running …
I find people’s routines really interesting. Everybody’s different. Some people are early birds while others are night owls. Some people work long hours and others manage to fit a lot of work into a short period of time. In this post I chat about what a typical day looks like for me and the various …
I spend my days in a chemistry lab making drug-like molecules. A lot of these end up being small quantities (less than 0.1 g!) and usually have the appearance of a white/off-white powder. Occasionally I get a colour which is very exciting. The question a non-chemist might ask is “how do you know you’ve made …
Continue reading "How do I know I’ve made the right molecule?"
The Chemistry of a PhD 