My favourite aspect of doing a PhD is being able to decide your route of research, within reason, so I could tailor my research questions towards what I find most interesting. For example, sometimes multiple research questions are formed from experimental results, but it is my choice to decide which route of research I want to take. Quite often, if it’s the aspect you’re most interested in, it's where you’ll excel.

Due to working with living organisms, most days begin with growing new bacterial cultures for use in experiments later that day, or processing cultures from the previous day. Depending on the experiments I’ve chosen to do that day, I’ll begin setting up as soon as I get to campus. My experiments can take anywhere between 3-8 hours to complete, usually with some downtime between each procedure where I have time to respond to emails and read relevant research papers.

In January 2020, a new biolab opened in S building, giving us much more space for our research. Not only this, the biolab was equipped with lots of new apparatus to use which really helped me develop new encapsulation techniques. As a PhD student, we also have access to the Graduate House - a great study and social space to meet PhD students from other courses.

There are other PhD students within the department, and we support each other with research-based questions or general wellbeing. Also, PGR representatives and champions are always available to provide support.

Since November 2020, I have been working at the asymptomatic COVID-19 test centre, moving to the symptomatic test centre in January 2021. I have found this to be a great opportunity to contribute towards the pandemic response and meet new members of staff from other departments.