In this post, Lucy Kershaw explains how they used Student Partnership Agreement Funding to rejuvenate a monthly meeting series, in an attempt to support PhD students and engage colleagues from across other Centres and Schools in imaging physics. Lucy is a Reader and an MRI physicist working at the Edinburgh Imaging Facility QMRI. This post is part of the Student Partnership Agreement 2024 series.
Imaging physics is a discipline that is well-represented across the College, but it tends to be divided between different centres and institutes that focus on body areas and systems despite the techniques being used in a much broader context. With this in mind, we wanted to rejuvenate an existing Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) physics monthly meeting series, broadening the audience and the scope of the talks. By combining this meeting with those organised by the Centre for Cardiovascular Science’s CINEMA theme (Cardiometabolic Imaging, led by Prof Carmel Moran) we were able to include MRI, ultrasound, computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography (PET). It soon became clear that there were links with image analysis, our NHS colleagues in MRI, and the School of Physics and Engineering.
For the monthly meetings, we wanted to have a mixture of presentations from students, senior research and clinical staff and external speakers. This forum was intended to offer support and advice for students and early career researchers at all stages, from first presentation at thesis committee through first meeting abstract, presentation and journal publication to career next steps (inside or outside academia). Previous experience showed us that meetings tend to be better attended when coffee and snacks are provided, so we applied for a Student Partnership Award to allow us to do this.
Challenges
At the very beginning, we took the decision to make this an in-person meeting with no option to join remotely. This was a difficult call and I have been concerned that this excludes some potential attendees. Attendance has been steady at around 15-20 (refreshments certainly help). Given that the people involved are already spread across different buildings and campuses I believe there is real value in meeting face to face. I have felt nervous about this decision when the speaker has been presenting virtually – in some ways this seems like something of a mixed message! We will continue to keep this under review.
The second challenge that we’ve worked hard to address is making a sure that the speakers tailor their talks for a broad imaging physics audience. I think it’s all too easy to forget that not everyone has an understanding of the specifics of PET or MRI and the audience can easily be lost if talks get too specialist. Very often ‘science communication’ skills focus on communicating to a lay audience, but communicating your science to other scientists not in your field is also very important. This is a skill that comes with practice, and we will continue to remind speakers not to assume specialist knowledge.
I asked the more senior speakers to include a story about academic failure, because I think it’s good to acknowledge that this does happen to even the most distinguished scientists. Junior researchers can be left feeling that a successful academic has had an unbroken record of grant and paper acceptance letters, so one rejection must mean that they’re never going to make it. I have been to a couple of sessions where failures were described and openly discussed and it made for a very refreshing perspective, as well as the realisation that professors are not (always) superhumans.
Having said all that, it has been almost impossible to persuade our speakers to address this specifically. Even if I ask this as a direct question the answer has been ‘oh, there were lots of failures’ or ‘well, I’ve worked with some really good people over the years’. I encourage everyone to think about times when things didn’t go to plan and reflect on them – what went wrong? What did you learn? I’ll be continuing my requests for this to be included in future talks.
Highlights, feedback and future plans
For me, the highlight from the last six months was a speaker from Siemens who I know well in a work setting but whose talk about her career gave a fascinating glimpse of her childhood growing up in Romania before the 1989 revolution. It was a talk full of humour and of insight regarding the move into industry from academia and very well-received. A visiting researcher in ultrasound gave a talk about a spin-out company he formed, which was a very honest account about the challenges of bringing a product to market from a university setting into commercialisation. In industry and business, people seem far more willing to speak about failure!
In our survey of attendees after six months of meetings we had very positive feedback, and, encouragingly, several suggestions for future meetings and people volunteering to help with organisation. In particular, the inclusion of NHS staff was highlighted as a strength of the meeting, and we will be welcoming two NHS medical physicists who have recently completed the training scheme to talk about their experience. We also plan to have a session led by PhD students with lightning talks to explain their projects and see which other students are working in a similar area but perhaps using a different imaging modality. There was universal approval of the provision of coffee, tea and snacks, and I was pleased to see the following piece of feedback:
I do appreciate that there is an imaging focused community, thank you for your work 🙂
In conclusion, I think that the meetings have been a success and we have gone some way towards bringing the scattered community of imaging physicists together. I look forward to continuing this meeting series – we are not necessarily a discipline that might be expected within the School of Medicine, but we are in many ways the ultimate in cross-cutting themes.
Student and staff organisers
- Michael Langsen
- Carmel Moran
- Lucy Kershaw
Lucy Kershaw
Lucy is a Reader and an MRI physicist working at the Edinburgh Imaging Facility QMRI. Before coming to Edinburgh, she worked in Manchester and Toronto, and her research focuses on the use of quantitative MRI in health and disease. She also chairs a research ethics committee, and knits as if her life depended on it.
