// Archives

My Pre-reg Story (So Far): 6 Months in a Hospital and Becoming a ‘Proper’ Grown Up

The latest installment in James Smith’s pre-reg journey. I remember the times when a ‘Pre-registration year’, or ‘pre-reg’, was a distant, almost-theoretical concept for me. That was four and a half years ago, when I first started my undergraduate degree in Pharmacy. Now, that concept is my reality; I am halfway through my pre-reg year …

The Much Needed London Getaway Weekend

This blog was first published on the Student Life blog and is written by Olivia, a pharmacy student. You can see Olivia’s past blogs here. First off, apologies for not blogging in the longest time. I have been busy with a couple of things: Going home for Christmas Revising for exams Losing my mind Exams …

U21 Summer School in Mexico

Low budget Healthcare: What the U21 Summer School in Mexico taught me Despite our best efforts as Pharmacy students, terminologies like QALY might sometimes seem a bit of a blur through those 9 am lectures after a whole night of binge-watching Mad Men or Gossip Girl. However it is hard to miss words like ‘managing …

Studying Abroad: My Malaysia Adventure

When I was applying to study pharmacy as an undergraduate many years ago, one thing in particular drew me towards The University of Nottingham more than anything else; the opportunity to travel and study abroad. This past year has been my fourth and final year of study and my wish finally came true, as I …

The squiggly blue line

Naim Hage, final year PhD student reflects on his PhD journey. I just plucked out my first grey hair, which I am definitely attributing to doing a doctoral degree. After 3+ years of hard work, it’s scary exciting to know that I have only just scratched the surface of my discipline. As I steadily approach the …

Collaborations: On Winning Friends and Influential Science

In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins extols the virtues of altruism and cooperation in benefitting species and their survival. For humanity, nowhere is this demonstrated more prominently than in scientific research where collaboration is essential in almost every aspect of the craft. Not only do they result in expansion of the knowledge base but also …

An Insider’s Guide to the Life Academic

The American comedian Lois C.K. in his act described the pursuit of undertaking a doctorate of philosophy as ‘not particularly impressive, as you basically just study one thing for three years’. What he doesn’t elaborate on though is just exactly how much breadth, adventure and variety there is to studying ‘just one thing’. Last week, my …

National Cancer Day (4th February)

If you’re not currently aware, today is National Cancer Day! Cancer seems to have filtered into my life as of late from the Cancer module last semester to volunteering at Cancer Research UK and I’m sure most peoples lives have been touched by the disease. Although no doubt we think of loved ones daily, today …

An insider’s look at a Centre for Doctoral Training

When I first thought about doing a PhD, I had no idea there were so many different things to consider: country, university, school, academic group, funding, research area… this list goes on and could probably be a publication in itself. Everyone stressed the importance of picking the right topic, and I found, not surprisingly, this …

An awful shame

Here is the sixth blog from our Emeritus Professor, Malcolm Stevens, FRS:  Nitrogen fixers   In 1967 the work of my small team at the Pharmacy Department, Heriot-Watt University, focussed on three related structures: triazines, which are six-membered rings containing three nitrogen and three carbon atoms; triazenes, which contain an array of three contiguous nitrogen atoms …