Lamprou Lab Blog

Last October, I had the opportunity to join the Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) embedded within the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Continuous Manufacturing and Crystallisation ( CMAC ). As I am close to finishing my first year, I think it is a good idea to explain why it is really worth being four years PhD student in sunny Glasgow. When I joined, I didn’t have a clear idea about how DTC works, so I am going to introduce some of the differences between DTC program and a standard PhD.  *Best (funniest) Acronym of CMAC. Courtesy of Brucci Wareham     

"Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o the puddin'-race! Aboon them a' ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye worthy o' a grace As lang's my arm." The first lines of 'To a Haggis' by Robert Burns (1759-1796), who was born into a farming family, but was much more interested in poetry and the ladies (having many affairs in his life time). Burns’ poems are written in old Scots, a dialect that even local students can struggle to understand sometimes. Despite this it is undeniable that Burns had a wonderful and romantic way with words and some of his more famous works include ‘To a Mouse’ , 'TamO’Shanter' and 'Alud Lang Syne' (a song, which is sung at Hogmanay the world over).  It is because of these great works that we celebrate the birth of Scotland's national poet on the 25th of January every year.   

  If you join the Lamprou group, it's not only for   its academic side and the perspective of spending your next three years in the lab of the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences (SIPBS). Let's admit it, we love   passing a spare couple of hours in social activities.   Winter has arrived once again, and we   could not miss out a Christmas party with the   rest of the group, even if   this occurred a little bit early in our calendar, at the very beginning of December.

With winter fast approaching and the early onset of seasonal affective disorder just round the corner it was concluded that in order to raise the groups’ spirits an outing should be prescribed. Since lab rats do not get out the lab often we decided to organise a self-guided mystery tour of our wonderful base city of Glasgow. With countless free museums in Glasgow ( http://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/museums/ ) throughout hiding some of the best collections in the world, along with a simple easy-to-use underground system ( www.spt.co.uk/subway/ ) a trail was set up to take three teams from a secret location to a secret location covering the entire city. A great way to not only show-off some of the spectacular sights of the Commonwealth games host city to the new students from further afield but it was also a chance for the students who are residents to revisit some well-loved trips and tourist hot spots.