Lucrezia Gigante welcomed me with a nice cup of coffee — made the Italian way with a moka pot. Although she has been living in England for some time now, this ritual remains an essential part of her daily life. Currently, she’s a research associate at the University of Glasgow, but her path to reach this point hasn’t been exactly linear.
She first studied Classics in Milan, but soon realized she didn’t want to teach Latin, Greek, or Italian. Instead, she was drawn to museums. But how do you work in a museum when you haven’t yet acquired any formal training in this field? That was the question haunting her as she completed her degree.
Fri, 13 June 25
Rishika Agarwal is a scientist specialized in human skin organoids, who obtained her PhD at the University of Basel, Switzerland.
This scientific field is far from mine and it sparked curiosity in me. Before meeting her I read that organoid culture technology has advanced at an impressive pace in recent years, earning the title of “Method of the Year 2017” by Nature Methods for its transformative potential in studying human biology in both health and disease (Lancaster & Knoblich, 2014). These miniature, self-organizing 3D tissue models offer an unprecedented opportunity to bridge the gap between traditional 2D cell cultures and complex in vivo models, revolutionizing biomedical research (Agarwal et al., 2023).
They sound like the perfect subject for a Sci-Fi story, right?
Sun, 6 Apr 25
Did you ever drink an espresso (preferably) somewhere in Italy? If you close your eyes now, can you feel the nice energetic lift that drinking a good balanced espresso gives? Well… that’s Elena! Her words: if she was a coffee, she would be exactly an espresso!
I hope you already had the pleasure to meet her! In this case, you know of what kind of passion I’m talking about. But in case you don’t know her yet, I’m sure you will want to connect with her as soon as you are done reading this post!
Sun, 17 Sept 23
I belong to that category of people that had a difficult time during their PhD, not that I was depressed or unhappy, but I felt under constant strain. Every day.
Although, I am sure a big portion of graduate students recognize this situation, I think it was not right to feel that way.
The problem I see now is that what we experience during the PhD has consequences also afterwards. It is not going to go away just because we graduate. For this reason, taking care of your own mental health is important if you think about your whole working life in a sustainable way.
Wed, 20 July 22
Our brain’s objective is to allow us to survive by sticking to what we already know because that’s safe. That’s our comfort zone, the area where we survive. However, it’s only thanks to courage that we step away from the comfort zone and we go towards the area where magic happens. Only there, out there, we start LIVING!
Thu, 30 September 21
I recently had the opportunity to chat again with Katharina about her PhD path. She graduated last December and now she is happily working as Education Specialist in Wageningen. Like, Miguel, she was one of my students during the MSc thesis.
Mon, 09 August 21
Motivation is the process that starts, guides and sustains a PhD journey. At the beginning is the trigger that jump starts you. Afterwards, it becomes the drive that pushes you to continue till you reach your objective: getting the PhD.
Sat, 10 July 21
