Where did you go and what did you do?

I completed a remote placement jointly with the Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) and two of its journals, where I contributed to a wide range of publishing, outreach, communications and membership activities. During the placement, I wrote an article for the SEB Magazine, developed an educational outreach resource on Minecraft foxes, and helped create a new outreach resource for Nottingham Science Festival 2026. I also curated a series of Grant Stories showcasing the impact of SEB funding and contributed to the Society’s Awards Nomination Taskforce. Within journal activities, I led the creation, promotion and delivery of the first Conservation Physiology webinar, supported the Open Education and Development (OED) webinar series and working group, and managed the journal’s social media presence. In addition, I assisted with membership record management through the Society’s CRM system, conducted competitor analysis of Conservation Physiology and related journals, generated leads to encourage more plant science submissions, and helped clear a submission backlog for the Journal of Experimental Botany ahead of a transition to a new submission platform. I also supported the Journal of Experimental Botany 75th Anniversary Symposium, gaining experience across scientific publishing, stakeholder engagement, event delivery and research communications.

• Article for SEB magazine: https://www.sebiology.org/news-publications/magazine/autumn-magazine-2025.html
• Educational resource: https://www.sebiology.org/outreach/public-resources/minecraft-foxes.html
• Outreach resource for Nottingham Science Festival 2026.
• Curated a series of Grant Stories: https://www.sebiology.org/grants/grant-stories.html

What made you want to do that particular PIPS and what skills have you learned?

I was interested in publishing, learned societies and science-adjacent careers.

Through this placement, I developed a broad range of professional and technical skills relevant to scientific publishing, communications and event management. I gained hands-on experience managing customer relationship management (CRM) and content management (CMS) systems, helping to maintain membership records and online content efficiently. I built skills in online event planning through supporting and leading webinars, and learned how to organise productive meetings that achieve clear objectives and outcomes.

Working with academic journals gave me valuable experience navigating journal submission systems and editorial workflows, while conducting competitor analysis strengthened my ability to assess organisational performance and identify opportunities for growth. I also developed expertise in social media management, including creating and promoting content to engage target audiences. In addition, I enhanced my proficiency in Advanced Excel, improving my ability to organise, analyse and interpret data effectively.

Ask lots of questions and be open to new experiences!

What has been the impact (or likely future impact) of your PIPS?

Competitor analysis will be used to inform the journal strategy for the next year. Educational resources and webinars hopefully help inspire young scientists. Hopefully improve representation of minoritised scientists in prestigious science awards.

How would you sum up your PIPS experience?

A well-rounded experience that gave lots of insights into publishing, running a society and working in the charity sector. I’m grateful for the trust I was given and the amazing mentorship I received from both teams.

Where did you go and what did you do?

I completed my PIPS at the Open Innovation Team (OIT), who are a team that provide policy advice and analysis for projects across different government departments. They focus on increasing evidence-based policy decisions by highlighting academic and industry expertise during the policy development process. They also provide policy engagement advice for academics at their partner universities, which includes York.

During my placement at the OIT I was involved in a few projects. At the beginning of my placement, I was on a project for the Department of Education (DfE) around educational technologies. I was involved in drafting the report for submission to the client, which included writing policy analysis for the policy options we presented in the report. After this, I was moved onto a project about Media and Trust for the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS). This project had just kicked off, so I was involved in different activities than the other project, which was in its later stages. For this project, I was involved in doing an initial literature review, identifying experts in the field, and then interviewing the experts. By the end of my time on the project, I had also led some of the expert interviews.

During the main projects, I was also involved in delivering some of the OIT’s partner university benefits. This included giving policy engagement advice for academics based on their research and policy impact ambitions.

Use this time to venture out of your comfort zone and place yourself in an experience that pushes you to gain new skills. It can help you evaluate future plans and gain more experience of different applications of a PhD.

What made you want to do that particular PIPS?

From the beginning of my PhD, I knew that I wanted to get out of the lab for my placement. Doing a policy-related placement appealed to me as I was interested to explore other avenues for impact outside of research. I was also interested in experiencing the policy-science interface from the policy angle, which a placement with the OIT allowed, given their involvement with academics.

What skills have you gained from your PIPS?

One of the parts of my placement that I had no previous experience with was expert engagement. I had never interviewed experts before my placement, and by the end I was able to lead interviews as well. Expert engagement, through both expert interviews and academic policy advice clinics, ended up being some of my favourite parts of the placement.

The drafting process for reports at the OIT was very different than I was used to. Writing for a policy audience felt very different to academic writing, which was something I had to get used to. The process was fast-paced, and the feedback and revision process was almost continuous, which was different to how I am used to writing. Developing my writing skills for a policy audience has positively impacted my writing by making me think about how to best present my work in an accessible and succinct manner.

What has been the impact (or likely future impact) of your PIPS?

I have contributed significantly to a report that is due to be sent to the client soon and could inform new policies. I’ve also helped with the kick-off for another project, which involved doing the initial literature review that will provide the basis for the report, as well as conducted expert interviews, which are important in the development of policy recommendation ideas. The OIT have PhD students year-round and PhD students contribute significantly to the projects they carry out.

How would you sum up your PIPS experience?

I had a wonderful time during my PIPS! It was nice to experience a completely different type of work and the topics of the work I was doing were very interesting. The team was also very lovely and provided a positive environment to work within.  

Where did you go and what did you do?

I completed my PIPS with the Food Standards Agency (FSA). I was involved in several studies relating to antimicrobial resistance and animal welfare. I produced literature reviews on: antimicrobial susceptibility testing; precision fermentation; and whole genome sequencing techniques. In addition, I produced: a summary of the welfare of farmed animals act; a checklist document of animal welfare requirements for new food technology applications; and a comprehensive document on the methodologies used in antimicrobial susceptibility testing.

What made you want to do that particular PIPS?

The FSA plays a critical role in ensuring that food suppliers maintain excellent health and hygiene techniques, while food supplies and food additives are free from harmful microbes and toxins. I attended an excellent talk by Rick Mumford from the FSA at a White Rose DTP AGM, which piqued my interest in antimicrobial testing of animal feedstuffs. I was keen to learn more about how the FSA analyses and approves applications for new animal feedstuffs and feed supplements, as well as their role in ensuring good farm animal welfare practices are maintained at all times.

What skills have you gained from your PIPS?

My PIPS project has helped me to further develop my transferable skills. Working within a team and having regular catch up meetings with my supervisors was incredibly beneficial in showing me how groups interact within a workplace environment and helped hone my presentation and inter personal skills.

I was required to understand and disseminate information on several topics for which I had very little previous knowledge, and produce detailed documents within a limited time frame. This helped to enforce my previous organizational, time-keeping, and science communication skills, while challenging me to work outside my comfort zone. I also gained experience in negotiating difficult and sometimes arduous bureaucratic documentation, transforming information gleaned into a format that could be understood by the whole team.

What has been the impact (or likely future impact) of your PIPS?

I contributed to enhancing the FSA’s knowledge and ability to independently assess

the safety of microorganisms in feed additive applications. The documents I produced  on whole genome sequencing, microbial susceptibility, and animal welfare will be used to improve the FSA’s knowledge and to develop training materials for new starters. Additionally, the checklist I produced relating to farm animal welfare can be used by the FSA to ensure that applicants proposing new feed additives have complied with all relevant animal welfare regulations during animal feed trials. I now have links within the Food Standards Agency and may consider a career working there in the future.

How would you sum up your PIPS experience?

My PIPS was an incredibly edifying and satisfying experience. Producing documents on microbial testing of animal feed additives and the need for strict animal welfare practices allowed me to gain an understanding of the intricacies of government legislature. It allowed me to apply my scientific and communication skills within a professional workplace environment. It also pushed me to work outside my comfort zone, while improving and enhancing my transferable skills. This has resulted in increasing my confidence in my own abilities.

What advice would you give to other PGRs about PIPS?

I would advise other PGRs to spend time researching possible PIPS placements, and to choose one that piques their interest while challenging them to work outside their comfort zone. Feel free to approach people and places that aren’t advertising PIPS on the DTP website – I contacted Rick Mumford from the FSA directly after listening to his talk at a White Rose DTP AGM. He quickly approached other colleagues within the FSA for possible projects, and I was lucky to have a detailed project produced especially for me by my ultimate supervisor David Kovacic.

Where did you go and what did you do?

I undertook an internship at Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) at the Oxford Science
Park, where I joined the Machine Learning Team. During my placement I developed an
app that enables initial evaluation of deep neural network basecaller models.

What made you want to do that particular PIPS?

I decided to do my internship at Oxford Nanopore Technologies because I wanted to
improve my bioinformatic skills in a company developing long-read sequencing
technology.

What skills have you gained from your PIPS?

I have improved my programming and software developer skills and expanded my
knowledge on Long Short-Term Memory models and transformer networks. I have also
learnt a lot about ONT basecalling fundamentals.

What has been the impact (or likely future impact) of your PIPS?

I grasped a deeper understanding of the industrial environment, the gained practical
experience will definitely help me in my future career.

How would you sum up your PIPS experience?

It was fantastic! I have learnt a lot, and I have met many amazing people from the
Machine Learning, Applications, Workflows, Product Management and Marketing Teams.
I also had a chance to go on the MinION manufacturing building tour. I had a great time
during my internship!

What advice would you give to other PGRs about PIPS?

Choose a field that you are actually interested in, it is a wonderful opportunity to get
industrial experience.

Where did you go and what did you do?

My placement was at the University of Sheffield in the Biosciences teaching department with Dr Laura Corns. During my time on placement, I had the opportunity to engage with a variety of activities related to teaching and curriculum design. I first began by conducting a comprehensive review of the 1^st year Neuroscience module. This review involved completing the modules lectures and making note of each topic’s relative difficulty and any concepts that were particularly challenging. I also conducted a survey of the previous year 1 Neuroscience cohort, where they rated the difficulty of each topic on a scale of 1-5. Finally, several volunteers from the previous cohort participated in a focus group where they gave more detailed thoughts on the module. All of this was combined into a report that was then presented to the ‘Introduction to Neuroscience’ lecturers. This report included a list of the most difficult topics, an analysis of the effectiveness of the current timeline of lectures, statistical analysis of the survey responses to quantify student ratings and highlight correlations between topics and a thematic analysis of focus group responses to identify recurring issues students had. All of this feedback was used to help inform the design of a supporting module handbook. This handbook is going to be an open educational resource that takes a more interactive approach to the module content. I identified Pressbooks as a good site to use and created an example chapter on one of the topics within the module, using Inkscape and H5P to create interactive resources. I also had the opportunity to  work on the development of the Biosciences Year 2 curriculum which is currently undergoing an overhaul. This mostly involved meetings with all the teaching staff where changes were discussed and each topic lead then had the opportunity to work with relevant staff to decide on content to include and general learning outcomes they wanted the module to meet. Finally, I was able to deliver some of the ‘Introduction to Neuroscience’ lectures this year and received feedback from staff and students.   

What made you want to do that particular PIPS?

I am in the final year of my PhD, and I am currently trying to determine where I want to go with my career from here. Academia is one of the options I am considering over others, but I had limited teaching experience at the higher education level and limited understanding of what the lecturer aspect of the role might look like. This placement provided me with the opportunity to deliver lectures, participate in the curriculum design process and talk with a variety of staff with many different job roles within the department. I also want to apply for the FHEA fellowship level and this placement would give me a much better chance to produce a successful application utilising the experience I would gain. All of these factors made this an excellent choice for my PIPS

What skills have you gained from your PIPS?

This placement was excellent for learning a wide variety of different skills; a lot of these skills relate to designing curriculum at many different levels. In meetings with all the teaching staff I got to learn how learning outcomes for modules are determined, how assessment types for different modules are allocated and had the opportunity to give my own ideas on these things and on what potential content should be included in 2nd year Neuroscience. I was also tasked with making a supporting resource for the 1st year module and quickly decided I wanted it to be quite interactive to complement what students would learn in lectures. With advice from staff, I decided to make it an open educational resource (OER) which, when finished, would be available for use by other universities or anyone interested in learning more about neuroscience. This allowed me to learn how these resources are made which included creating my own interactive figures/tasks. To do this I utilised Inkscape for creation of vector images and H5P to create interactive elements, two software’s I was previously unfamiliar with.

It also challenged me to take concepts that can be quite complex and turn them into tasks that would be far more approachable to students with a variety of learning styles who may be struggling with the content. I also learned how to make surveys and handle the data, both from a confidentiality and statistical standpoint. I was already familiar with statistical analysis, but it was interesting to handle data dthat is completely different to what I typically use. I also had to write an ethics application for the survey and the focus group and learned how to recruit participants and draft appropriate questions. The focus group also included a subsequent thematic analysis of the transcript, another task I had never done before. This qualitative analysis was very different to what I typically do in my PhD, so it was really interesting to learn some of the skills more commonly used in educational research. Finally, I learned how individual lectures are designed to incorporate the learning objectives/outcomes of the module. This also included delivering several lectures to a large cohort. Overall, I learned a variety of skills that I feel really capture a lot of the responsibilities a university lecturer may have.

What has been the impact (or likely future impact) of your PIPS?

The most obvious impact is the way the placement has given me confidence on my career progression. I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of the different aspects of this placement, but this is especially true for delivering lectures to students and helping to design future curriculum with other members of staff. This has emphasised to me that I would like to continue on the academia route if possible, or in higher education in general as I found the whole experience really rewarding. Additionally, a portion of this placement also included working from home and this placement has really helped me improve my productivity outside of the lab, which I have previously struggled with. Finally, I have contributed to creating an OER that many people will hopefully eventually use and credit me for. This is an excellent asset to have on my CV and is especially useful if I want to apply for teaching jobs in the future. I will also use this as one of my case studies when I write my FHEA application, so the whole placement has been extremely beneficial for my career and for the number of new skills I have learned.

How would you sum up your PIPS experience?

My experience really solidified my career goals and helped me identify the options I have if I want to work in higher education. It also gave me the opportunity to learn a wide variety of skills that will be useful for many different jobs I may pursue in the future. Finally, I had a great time  interacting with students and staff and an excellent supervisor that really helped me enjoy my PIPS.

What advice would you give to other PGRs about PIPS?

Consider what you would like to get out of your PIPS before you decide what you actually want to do for your placement. Once you have that, pick something you think you will enjoy and that will give you a good variety of skills for the career options you want to pursue. Most importantly, organise your PIPS as soon as possible so you don’t have that stress later on in your PhD.

Where did you go and what did you do?

I undertook my PIPS at random42, a company that produces high quality medical animations for various companies. Animations generally involved demonstrations of MoD’s of target diseases, or MoA’s of various drugs to treat these diseases. During my internship, I had the role of creating scripts for these animations based on client briefs. This involved reading around the literature and finding references to build a story that we could incorporate into the animation. Alongside this, I also worked to create storyboards of these scripts. These directed the animation team as to what we wanted to show in each scene of the animation alongside the script narration. I was then often involved in subsequent client feedback meetings, after which I would tweak the script / storyboard to match the vision they had for the animation.

What made you want to do that particular PIPS?

As someone who’s research is primarily based on live cell imaging, I already had a strong interest in the use of visual imagery to explain research in a more interesting and understandable way. As a result, random42’s focus on using 3D and 2D animation to illustrate a range of disease pathologies and drug treatment mechanisms appealed to me. I also knew that working in an environment where I work on a range of different diseases and read around a lot of literature would help me with future research, alongside improve my writing skills.

What skills have you gained from your PIPS?

I have gained a wide range of skills from my PIPS. First, I have learnt how to more quickly read around a new topic and gather relevant information that can be used in a script/paper. I have also learnt how to more effectively put together a story within a piece of writing. Alongside this, because my scripts had to be communicated to a non-scientific expert audience of animators, my ability to explain scientific ideas and mechanisms to a wider audience improved significantly. Due to the wide range of tasks I might get in a day, I also developed a stronger ability to jump quickly between tasks in order of priority rather than focusing hard on one thing for a long period like I tended to do during PhD work. Finally, experience of client facing meetings helped improve my communication ability in a business context.

What has been the impact (or likely future impact) of your PIPS?

Doing my PIPS has reaffirmed my enjoyment of visually supplemented research communication and kept my focus on making sure that is something I incorporate into my own work. I will also keep this industry in mind when making future job decisions.

How would you sum up your PIPS experience?

I had a great experience during my PIPS. Everyone I worked with was extremely kind and helpful, and everything ran smoothly despite being mostly remote. I got to work on a wide variety of tasks and topics and was always given meaningful work that would result in tangible deliverables for the company. I gained some important skills that I can carry forward into the remainder of my PhD that will help towards getting my thesis together at a higher quality!

What advice would you give to other PGRs about PIPS?

Make sure to target a PIPS that is relevant to an interest you have in some way. Also try and do something different from what you do day to day in your PhD, so that it feels fresh (this will also help you feel ready to go when you finish the PIPS).