Hello! It’s crazy that it’s been almost a year since my last blog entry. It feels like I just wrote it yesterday!
The first year of my PhD was mainly dedicated to research training at our partner universities: TU Berlin, University of Copenhagen, University of Krakow, University of Ghent, KU Leuven, as well as our industrial partner, the VLB. My personal highlight was the course at my home University, University of Nottingham. Why? Firstly, part of our courses focused on sensory science, which I am very much interested in and secondly because I finally got the chance to show my EJD friends my new “home town” and the best Nottingham has to offer. We walked through parks, did a pub crawl, cycled from Sutton Bonington campus to University Park (13 miles), celebrated my birthday with a huge BBQ (Austrian style J ), etc.
Though I enjoyed travelling, courses and seeing my EJ-fellows, I was relieved that after the courses were complete that I got some time to progress my research. Soon I had gathered enough interesting results for my first poster presentation at Trends in Brewing 18’ in Ghent, Belgium. I was excited to go to my first conference, especially because there was a large group of us from Nottingham attending. However, I received another E-Mail stating I should present my poster as 1 of the 7 chosen “lucky” ones on stage at the conference. I was proud, but to be honest also very nervous.
Shortly after, I was accepted to present my research at the School of Fermentation Technology in Krakow. With some newfound confidence, I was excited to speak in front of so many experts from the brewing and malting industry, I even found myself enjoying presenting and answering questions on my research.
To sum up, the last year was like a roller coaster ride, there were some fantastic moments and some that did not run as smoothly as planned. I guess all of you; especially those working in research know that feeling when experiments do not work. When you dive into research papers for weeks, (months) trying to figure out a solution to a problem only to find when you finally emerge with the solution and perfect experimental set up … it did not work.
Well ladies and gentlemen, welcome to science! Keep your head up, trouble shoot and continue! 😊
PS: I am going to present my research at the Young Scientist Symposium 2018 in Bitburg, Germany! Hope you are coming as well!
