Gazette: Easter week 1
MCR Events
Room ballot
A quick reminder that the postgraduate accommodation individual room ballot will run on the 25-27 April. Put the dates in your diary if you are planning to enter and check your emails (subject: Postgraduate Accommodation for 2022-23) for further details or click here.
Yoga
Welfare yoga sessions are back on after the break. Come unwind after a day of classes, research, revisions or otherwise as we practise yoga. Unfortunately, this week Yoga is cancelled but join next week.
CHUTalk: Giacomo
Join us this Thursday at 7 pm in Tizard Room for a great CHUTalk by Giacomo! Wine, cheese and other snacks and non-alcoholic drinks will be provided.
Participation is free, but to help with the organisation of the event, please express your interest to attend via this form. To keep everyone safe, do not attend if you feel unwell or have symptoms of COVID-19. The event location have step-free access and padded seating will be available.
Details for the talk are below:
Title: A biography of the brain: the evolutionary history of the nervous systemAbstract: The vertebrate brain is one of the major evolutionary innovations in the history of life and a key to their success. It is also the source of many of the traits and abilities unique to humans. Despite this, we know surprisingly little about the origin of the brain: if all animals with a spine have it, where does it come from? And when did it evolve? To answer these questions we focus primarily on marine animals, as life evolved and diversified in the sea through most of its history. I will start by re-tracing the evolution of the nervous system, from the first neuron to the diversity of neural architectures in modern animals. I will then describe more specifically how amphioxus, a small invertebrate that lives buried in the seabed, can help us understand the origin of our own brain.
Keywords: Nervous system, Brain, Evolution, EvoDevo, History of life, Amphioxus
Iftar at Churchill MCR
Iftar is the post sunset meal Muslims break fast with during Ramadan. It is a community meal and everyone is welcome. You can bring a meal from your culture to share on the table, or join us without one, to celebrate the diversity and community at Churchill. Iftar is at 8.24 pm on 29th April, please join us a few minutes prior so we can begin the meal together on time in the Seminar Room 1.
Churchill v Fitz Football Final
This Friday will be a match of titans: Churchill vs Fitzwilliam men’s football teams for the cuppers final trophy. The perfect opportunity to see everybody again and support the Churchill team; join us!The match itself is starting at 7pm on Friday 29th April. We will convene from 4pm for a variety of traditional pre-game rituals at the MCR Bar: pre-match analyses, consumption of drinks, exchanging of frivolities with the players and so forth. Face panting may also be on the cards. After an extensive foray into both college football strategic analysis, as well as chants one might expect to engage in match-side, we will head over to take the supporters bus (sometimes termed the “U-bus”) down to Grange Road to support the squad.
Super Short Summaries:
An MCR 2MT Competition
The time has flown by, Super Short Summaries is on Saturday (30th April) from 6-7 pm in Wolfson Hall! We have a fantastic group of presenters to listen to that you will be able to chat with at the 7 pm drinks reception:
- Eva Bernadett Benyei – 2nd Year PhD Student in Microbiology
- Amila Jayasinghe – 4th Year PhD Student in Civil Engineering
- Srinivas Mandyam – Masters Student in Physics
- Belquis Haider – 1st Year PhD Student in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology
- Hyung(Erion) Cha – PGCE student in Art Education
- Sarah Sandor – 2nd Year PhD Student in Ecology, Evolution and Microbiology
- Katie-Lou White – 1st Year PhD Student in Physics
- Lambed Tatah – 4th Year PhD Student in Medical Science
- Josephine Tumwesige – Masters Student in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology
- Landon Clark – Masters Student in Immunology
- Casey Mogilevsky – Masters Student in Chemistry/Biochemistry
- Krishanu Dey – 4th Year PhD Student in Physics
- Paula Mendoza – 1st Year PhD Student in Liquid Hydrogen Production for Aviation
- Katherine Mann – 1st Year PhD Student in Politics & International Studies
- Miaomiao Zou – 1st Year PhD Student in 3D printing of Liquid Crystal Polymers
- Eszter Arany – Clinical Medical Student
- Santiago Agüí Salcedo – 1st Year PhD Student in Theoretical physics
- Zhixuan Liu – 1st Year PhD Student in Industrial and Environmental Fluid Dynamics
- Louise Luo – 4th Year PhD Student in Architecture
- Andrei Paleyes – 3rd Year PhD Student in Computer Science
- Daniel Guerrero-Romero – 2nd Year PhD Student in Medical Science/Bioinformatics
- Tharushi Wijesena – Medical Student in Trauma & Orthopaedic
- Maharshi Dhada – 4th Year PhD Student in Engineering
- Arya Bhomick – Masters Student in Neuroscience
Come along to show your support and find out more about the great research conducted by our MCR community. You will even be able to vote for your favourite presenter for the People’s Choice Award!
If you have any questions about the event, please feel free to email me at mcr-academic@chu.cam.ac.uk.
Around the College
Give me Inspiration! The Paradigm Shift with Professor Devi Sridhar
What do academics actually do? What motivates them to get out of bed each morning and to deliver what is — or in many cases what isn’t – expected of them? Join the Give me Inspiration! series to join the discussion about these and similar questions. The next in this series of conversations will be with Professor Devi Sridhar, Professor and Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh.This is a hybrid event, taking place in person in the Wolfson Theatre (subject to the Covid situation/guidelines at that time), but also live-streamed online as a Zoom webinar. Please use this form to book for either format, you will be asked to specify which ticket you require.The event will be followed by a drinks reception at 7pm. All are welcome to attend. Places are free but bookings are essential.
For booking and further details, visit the Eventbrite.
Churchill Connect
Churchill Connect is a special networking platform just for Churchillians.
It works a bit like a cross between Facebook and LinkedIn (you can use it for tracking down/keeping up with friends after you graduate, as well as informal networking and mentoring from alumni), but with no ads and no selling your data to anyone!
This is the website we use particularly to advertise opportunities that we hear about such as internships, and you can also reach out to alumni who have marked themselves as willing to help, in order to get some career-related advice.
You can search for users by degree, industry, company, etc, and message them within the platform to ask for help, perhaps by looking over your CV.
Registration is free, join here: Churchill Connect.
Safety and lighting on campus
There is an initiative circulating amongst colleges regarding to welfare, safety, and lighting at night. In order to better serve our Churchill family, I was wanting to gain insight and feedback about what areas people feel are safe or unsafe and think could potentially be made to feel safer at night.
Please take 5 minutes to fill out this survey so we can have a bit more info on what we can do!
Around the University
Stephen Lawrence Day 2022
To mark this year’s Stephen Lawrence Day, Mina Smallman will be in conversation with Ruby Cline and Joy Adeogun at 5.30pm on Friday 6 May 2022 in Buckingham House Lecture Theatre, Murray Edwards College.
Further details and booking details are available on Eventbrite.
Cambridge Digital Humanities: Learning Programme (Easter 2022)
UCS Easter Term Groups and Workshop timetables
We run three kinds of groups at University Counselling Service (UCS): workshops, focused groups and longer counselling groups.
The workshops are generally one-off events and do not require any ongoing commitment. The focused groups are for people who want help with a particular issue. Longer counselling groups offer support over a period of several weeks. To ensure a group experience, we aim to run groups and workshops of six participants or more and if there are insufficient numbers to run a group or workshop it may be cancelled.
For students who want to register their interest, please advise them to complete the relevant registration forms, which can be found on clicking the following link for: Workshop registration form or Group registration form.
These are currently being held remotely, online via Zoom. In order to for students participate, they would need to either download Zoom (https://zoom.us/download) or install the app on their mobile phone or tablet.
For more information, visit the UCS website.
Clothes swap
As part of the college-wide Green Week from 2nd-9th May (the programme will be advertised soon!) there will be a clothes swap, taking place at King’s College on Sunday, 8th May, from 11am-3pm. Bring your old clothes and leave with new ones!
Postgrad Academy Student Summer Symposium
The Cambridge Zero Postgraduate Academy is hosting its inaugural Student Summer Symposium on Tuesday, 7 June 2022. The symposium will showcase new research in Climate Change and related fields being undertaken by postgraduate students at the university.Time: 10am – 5pm, Tuesday 7th JuneCost: FreeThe one day event will include speakers, panel events and a poster competition showcasing the range of research related to the climate crisis being undertaken across the university.We are currently welcoming applications for presentations and posters for the symposium from current postgraduate students across all fields, disciplines and subject areas. If your work is related to the climate crisis, we want you to apply!
The call for abstracts is now open: Please submit your abstract through the online abstract submission form
Deadline for abstract submissions: Friday, 6 May 2022
Registration for the symposium will open in early May.
We look forward to receiving your abstracts!
You are also encouraged to subscribe to the Postgrad Academy mailing list here: https://lists.cam.ac.uk/sympa/subscribe/ucam-cz-postgradacademy.
CUL Research Skills webinars for Easter Term 2022
As a researcher, you need to find, manage and share information effectively.
Have you ever wondered if you missed a crucial paper in your literature review? Failed to find that really useful piece of data from two years ago? Been unsure in what journal to publish your first article? Asked yourself if sharing an article online would breach copyright?
Come along to the CUL Research Skills webinars to develop the skills you need to ace your research projects.
Follow the link to see the full list of webinars and book a place.
Research Experience Survey 2022
The Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) is now open. You are invited to participate in this short online questionnaire which asks you to rate your experience about your course at Cambridge.
Your responses are important to us and will be combined with those of your peers to help inform your Faculty/Department about the experience of its postgraduate students. The results will assist the University to identify areas of strength, inform future enhancement and allow us to compare our postgraduate provision against other participating Institutions in the sector.
Where areas of concern are identified in our provision, this will be discussed with the Faculty or Department and also in University committees to ensure that our learning and teaching provision is of the highest quality.
All responses are confidential and the results are reported anonymously.
The questionnaire takes approximately 15 minutes to complete. The survey will close on 17 June 2022.
Brain Imagine Study
Earn up to £130 in multi-session EEG and MRI study: 2x 2h EEG (Downing Site), 2x 2h MRI scans (Addenbrookes), 3 x 1h sessions (Downing Site) performing a computer-based task.
If you are interested and:
- 18-35 years old
- With perfect or corrected-to-normal vision (contact lenses only, glasses cannot be taken into the scanner)
- Without history of neuropsychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorders
- Under no medication
- MRI safe (contact us if unsure)
then please drop us a line at abgresearch@psychol.cam.ac.uk using 7T_GP as subject.
Other opportunities
Can you reach net zero by 2050?
Uncomfortable Cambridge Tours
See the most iconic views of the city, while discovering the histories of town/gown conflict, slavery, colonialism, gender, and sexuality which shaped them. On these discussion-based tours, our guides tell stories and ask questions to spark messy, respectful conversations inspired by the cityscape.
– What should we do with controversial statues?– How should nations teach their histories?– Who has access to university education?For bookings and more information, visit the website.
Reach Cambridge
Based in Cambridge, Reach Cambridge (est. 2004) specialises in offering a range of academic summer courses for teenagers aged 14 to 18 years old from all over the world. The programs take place in the beautiful surroundings of the university city of Cambridge. Classes are complemented by a wide range of onsite activities and excursions to other exciting places in the UK. They also offer specialist one-to-one and group online courses throughout the year.
They are a small, supportive and collaborative year-round team who are committed to helping young people prepare for the future through our programs and courses. They provide empowering opportunities to staff and are focussed on helping individuals grow and develop into their role.
Due to an increase in their business and staff developments they now wish to appoint key personnel for our summer schools and year-round team.
Visit their website for summer openings and further details.
Open Vacancies at Oxford Summer Courses
