Orientation Days 2023
by Anastasiia Okhtienko
The second week of October 2023 was marked by the IMPRS-ML Orientation Days. For three days (09.10. - 11.10.), newly minted PhD students, among whom some had started just a few weeks before and some had already had their first TAC meeting, got acquainted with the program and their colleagues and received valuable advice on how to survive and enjoy their PhD time.
The first day started with a program overview, rules, and general information, including enrolment to institutes and TAC procedures presented by the IMPRS Coordination Office. It was followed by a Lego team-building exercise where students tested their talents as builders, architects and construction managers. Everybody had a lot of fun, and for the most successful teams the organizers additionally prepared special certificates that, without any doubts, will take pride of place in their CV. During coffee breaks, students enjoyed bretzels and small talks with their colleagues. The day culminated with the first part of the Good Scientific Practice Workshop with Barbara Steigenberger and Martin Spitaler. After a brainstorming session, participants unanimously agreed that transparency and reproducibility are core values that should be respected and supported by the scientific community.
On the second day, students had the workshop on "Staying Well during your PhD" by Hugh Kearns and the second part of the Good Scientific Practice Workshop. During the "Staying Well during your PhD" workshop, participants discussed the topic of mental health and learned that perfectionism and the habit of controlling everything increase the level of stress and could cause more harm than good. The workshop was full of curious tips, for example, how industrial headphones and signs “do not disturb” as well as specially delegated “worrying time” help some people with distraction factors and procrastination. The second part of the Good Scientific Practice workshop was devoted to case studies close to real pitfalls and issues that can arise in the academy, which participants solved in small groups using the MPG code of conduct and then shared with the audience to encourage further discussion.
On the third day, participants had time to get to know the facilities at the MPI that can provide their expertise and services to facilitate and speed up many routine procedures for the projects. Among them were the Protein Production (presented by Amrita Rai), NGS (nice talk by Rin Ho Kim) and Mass Spectrometry (introduced by Barbara Steigenberger) facilities. After the break, groups of students went on short excursion tours to additionally visit the Biochemistry Core, Crystallography, Imaging, and Cryo-EM facilities.
We hope that the entire PhD time with IMPRS will be as productive and exciting as these introductory days and that the advice received during the Orientation Days will allow students to get the most out of their PhD journey.
About the Author
Anastasiia completed her Master's degree in the area of human gut microbiome studies. After graduation, she decided to change both the research topic and methodology and joined the Pichlmair group in 2023 to spend more time with viruses and sometimes with her colleagues. In her free time, Anastasiia enjoys reading, bouldering and programming.