Hello from London again and Welcome to day 7 of the 66th LIYSF!
Today was the day! Yes, I was super excited because it was the day I had long awaited! I was up at 5 AM, running on very little sleep but the excitement for where we were headed kept me going. As usual, we gathered at the Queen’s lawn and were so ready to board the coach to none other than ‘OXFORD UNIVERSITY’!!
While other students departed for visits to places like Airbus, Temple Garden, University College London and other well-known scientific institutions, I had chosen to visit Oxford particularly due to my interest in the special scientific lecture on public health and medical research by UK Biobank and Oxford Population Health. After approximately a 2 hour drive, we arrived at Oxford and not very happy to share that I dropped my phone and cracked its screen. Definitely a frustrating moment, but at the end of the day, it’s just a screen, and being in Oxford is such an amazing experience that it’s hard to stay upset for long.
We spent the day attending a series of lectures from the leading researchers at Oxford Population Health and UK Biobank. They shared insights into their career journeys, what their typical day as researchers look like and how they work with massive population datasets to understand public health trends, disease outbreaks and drug effectiveness. One of the lectures also involved engaging and a very useful activity on how to design a research project and what parameters to take in consideration when working with large data sets. Well, that’s not it, we also had the amazing opportunity to tour the labs and look at the modern equipment.
One moment that stood out for me personally was meeting a biomedical researcher who had done his PhD on NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance). I’d never been particularly interested in NMR spectroscopy before, but hearing how it’s applied in biological research was a game changer as it really shifted my perspective about chemistry! And SURPRISE !!! All participants received a BONUS certificate for attending the amazing lectures delivered by the Oxford Population Health Team which was honestly such a nice way to wrap up the day!
After returning to London in the evening, we had dinner and then attended our final lecture of the day, a session on duality theory. While some students were completely engrossed in the lecture, I found it a bit hard to connect because physics isn’t really my area of interest. However, this served as a reminder of the diverse scientific interests represented at LIYSF for the change makers!
That’s a wrap to day 7 and can’t wait to go to bed and finally Relax!
