Month: May 2013

About the subjectivity of time and R!

Hi, I’m Torben, and I’m afraid that I am a little late with my blog post (my apologies for that)! Lately, I was introduced by one of my supervisors with the words “He’s one of the cancer guys”. I still find this a little awkward, but I reckon that this expression describes me quite well. I started developing to be a “cancer guy” since working for my master’s project at University of Potsdam where I analysed gene expression data of colorectal cancer samples. I studied bioinformatics in my masters and what fascinated me most was network theory (I hope I can talk about that in future posts).

Impossibility!!

Hi everyone, this is my first blog which means I am very excited. I will like to use this wonderful opportunity to wish a happy mother’s day to all the mothers .

This week was a very interesting week as some of us had the opportunity to go to the Precision Medicine Symposium, 2013. This year’s focus was on Breast cancer; some of the brightest minds in the field had the opportunity to present some insightful and seminal work. Again, I obviously loved being there.

This is one of the perks of being a PhD student at Imperial College London (ICL).

Exciting times!

This week (/last week really) it’s my turn to blog – how exciting! So, I was the last of the eight to join this years’ cohort, but couldn’t have been made more welcomed by everyone. Though, sharing a little honesty with you all now, when I first joined I did initially wonder what I had let myself in for! [See we’re a very unique bunch of budding scientists!]. Looking back now, and following a truly remarkable 6 months, I most definitely ‘fit’ into this assortment – there’s still a few European customs that I’m not convinced should be freely shared within the group.

Getting a grip. Just.

So it’s been a bit of an uphill struggle settling in with my PhD. This is mainly because it’s a totally different application of chemistry to my comfort zone (synthetic organometallic, not something you’d often describe as “comfortable”, eh?), not to mention the totally different vibe at Imperial compared to Newcastle, and the awful stomach-dropping feeling of being hopelessly out of my depth every time someone asks me even a fairly straightforward question. I’ve gotten tired of feeling totally out of control all the time, so I looked for some concrete measures to nail everything down and try to get a grip, both for my own sanity and because threatening to quit every other week is driving the other Stratigrads round the bend.