PIPS Internship Organisation Name 

Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging

Location 

University College London

When deciding on your internship, what did you want to experience and what did you hope to gain from that experience? 

I aimed to get some experience in working in public engagement and science communication. Moreover, I wanted to change the environment and see the "behind the scenes" of the science project development.

Did you get the experience you were expecting and did you achieve the personal development you had hoped to make? 

I certainly have achieved what I expected and gained a lot of transferable skills, especially skills related to communication and creative ideas generation.

Did you discover anything about yourself or make any achievements that you were not expecting? - I realized that I love being a part of the team when generating creative ideas and working on more creative projects, which is in contrast to research-based work, which I much rather prefer working on individually. One of the things that I learnt, which I haven't expected to do before I started my placement was website creation for the post-stroke fatigue project, where I gained valuable experience on how to create a website from scratch. Lastly, after receiving the post-event impact report, I realized that the session voted most useful by attendees was the one organised by me, because I found new charity members to collaborate and with the help of the team coordinated the workshop.

Has the internship made you feel differently about potential career options and has it helped to put the skills from research into a broader context? 

It helped me think outside the box and improved my communication skills, especially when it comes to approaching people I have never contacted before. It also made me consider alternative career options after I finish my PhD. As much as I love research now, I never know how I'm going to feel in the future. Although I missed working on my PhD during the placement, this project was really fun to work on, and if I could do another cool science project again, I would be up for it!