First day at Imperial! - Monday 06-02-2017

Today was my first day at Imperial. Around 11am I was introduced to professor Tweedy, who will be my supervisor for the coming week. She gave me an induction to the university and its safety-procedures. We also went to get a key card, which I would need to be able to enter certain parts of the building. After this I attended a bioengineering lecture covering the neurons in the brain. The main topic was how we could, by understanding the working of these neurons and their effect on long and short term memory, create models simulating this process. Examples of possibilities include, self-learning robots and partial artificial brain structures, which could help people with brain damage. Around 1pm two PhD-students, Maryam and Karla, met us and gave me an introduction to their projects. In the coming week I will attend their meetings and they will help me with the research I will conduct. After their introductions we had lunch together, which was a great opportunity to get to know each other better. They told me about their home countries, how they got into Imperial and what they are doing there now. I found this very interesting as I'm considering to do part of my study in the UK. After lunch we had the separate project meetings of Karla and Maryam. In Karla's meeting we worked on a few details in her mathematical equations that she found difficult to solve and in Maryam's meeting we worked on improving the paper she is going to present at a conference she will attend in Paris, according to the feedback she got from the organisation. We ended the day by having a look at the project I will mainly be working on this week. They explained the main concept to me and told me what was expected of me before I could start the actual experiments. Around 7pm I was back at Jo's house, where I am staying for the week. We ate dinner and I prepared some papers for tomorrow. That was my first very interesting yet exhausting day at Imperial. I am already looking forwards to tomorrow!