Hello! Last Sunday I had the opportunity to participate in the Doctoral Forum (DF) at ISSI 2023 and it was honestly amazing. The idea of the DF was to talk to other PhD students about our thesis ideas and questions, and get feedback on the things we are doing well, on what could be improved, on things we hadn’t thought about before, etc. There was an on-site group in Indiana and an online group that discussed the PhD separately and then united in a hybrid format to share conclusions.
I was part of the remote group. Although I would have loved to be physically present at the ISSI conference to discuss things in person and meet other researchers outside of the DF, being online had its advantages.
For instance, we were less students presenting remotely, thus we could devote more time to each other’s presentations and, more importantly, to each other’s feedback. I feel like I’ve learned a lot from what both the experts and the rest of the students told me about the stage of my thesis that I am right now, and I’m very grateful for that!
Moreover, some of the technical limitations that I address in my own thesis project were actually the core of other three students’ PhD, and I found that to be quite interesting. If only I had started the PhD in five years’ time, maybe I would not consider those elements as limitations, given their state-of-the-art research. Who knows! I’m excited about the future, to see how each other’s thesis evolve and grow and hopefully join forces and do the best science possible together đŸ¦¾đŸ¤