Last month the School of Biological Science hosted the annual postgraduate symposium. The content of the conference consists of scientific posters from the 2nd year PhD students and talks from those in their 3rd year. I know, we all complain about it, we’re all very busy and this is one more thing to do. But it always turns out to be great fun! It is always very nice to hear (or read) about you peers’ research. The School of Biological Sciences has different buildings and some students are based in different institutions or even overseas, this means that you don’t usually get a chance to hear what they have been up to. Even with people you share an office with, you know roughly what they are doing, but it is very nice to see how far they have gone. The social event at the end of the symposium organised by our favourite student society, Zoo&Roots, is great for networking and relaxing after the stress that always comes with public speaking.
These events keep getting better too! I was very impressed by the school’s effort to advertise the symposium. The posters were displayed in the foyer of the Zoology Building (as usual) and the talks were open to the public. This year we also had a hashtag for the conference (#SBSPGRCONF2017) so the event got quite a lot of visibility on social media. I also have to compliment all my colleagues for their beautiful posters and great talks! While I was preparing my talk on “Using Flickr to quantify wildlife watching activities in Scotland” I figured that I had a great opportunity to promote open science and the Aberdeen Study Group. After all, without open data and open source software my work would not have been possible! So I added a slide to my talk. I had no idea that slide would have won me a prize! I was awarded a runner up prize for best talk and for promoting open science thus making a “significant contribution to the scientific community”. As you might imagine I was very proud of myself. But the prize also made me feel proud of my institution for supporting, in such a clear and unambiguous way, my actions to promote open science.
Never miss a chance to promote #openscience. My talk at #SBSPGRCONF2017 @UoABioSci pic.twitter.com/jNV53reCIC
— Francesca Mancini (@Frances_Mancini) 20 aprile 2017
The SBS Postgraduate Symposium 2017 was a great event! I love how we all come together during these occasions and support each other’s work. It helps build that sense of community that academia needs so much at the moment. So my message from the symposium is: we need more community-building events in every university and, as always, promoting open science wins!