Category Archives: student blog

CV building webinar by Karl Brown 28th March 2023

The IBA-PhD arranged a CV Building ZOOM webinar on 28th March 2023 for all IBA members before going on easter vacation 🙂 We also included social gatherings in each local institute after the webinar – where we discussed about the seminar, exchanged knowledge about CV and resume, get to know each other more while eating pizza together. In total, 24 participants took this opportunity to build their CVs while building their careers. The attendees were belonging from UiT, NTNU, NMBU, UiO, OsloMet, and UiB.

Since a CV is the first contact you have with a prospective employer, this webinar was a perfect platform to improve on our CV which would enable us to make a good first impression on the employer. We learnt about the differences between a resume and a CV, what to include and what not.  

Picture taken by Srijana during the webinar

Additionally, we had a nice discussion section with Karl about improving our CV and making it to outstanding among several. We hope that this webinar has helped all other participants, especially final-year PhD’s who will be looking forward to applying for new positions soon

This webinar has generated awareness among us so that we start formulating our academic rewards, qualifications, and experiences and soon in the CV or resume, in an accurate way with some important keywords.

Picture taken at UiT during the social gathering

IBA member Christina Bleis is back from a research stay at Pennsylvania State University

Christina Bleis at Penn State

Christina Bleis: From March 11th to December 1st 2020, I had the pleasure to work on my PhD at the Center for Disease Dynamics (CIDD) at the Pennsylvania State University in US. Penn State is a top 25 research university with over 100,000 students.

Unfortunately, due to covid many attractions were closed and there were restrictions on social gatherings. Despite this, my research stay was a very exciting experience and highly productive in terms of PhD project progress.

Read more here.

IBA member Eric Juskewitz is back from a research stay at GlucoSet

January 2021. Author: Eric Juskewitz – PhD student – UiT

I am Eric, a PhD fellow in Microbiology at the UiT. With entering the last year of my PhD journey thoughts of the big “what’s next?” started to bubble up and are keeping me awake at night. Most of them revolve around possibilities the industry might have to offer.

Eric Juskewitz at GlucoSet.

The journey took me to Trondheim, where I joined the team of GlucoSet – a medtech start-up that is in the development phase of its product. So, what did a microbiologist learn in a company that is building a glucose sensor for ICU patients, made of glass fibre and polymers?

Read more about Eric´s research stay here.

My two months at Michigan State University, Michigan, USA

 

IBA student and the recipient of the IBA travel grant for research stays abroad, Erik Paulshus, has spent two months in the US working on his PhD (he is currently enrolled at NMBU, Ă…s). This is what he had to say about it!

  

Michigan State University, Michigan, USA

My PhD project aims at identifying the major sources of antibiotic resistance in urban wastewaters. Approaching this issue, we have looked at phenotypic and resistance profiles in bacterial isolates cultivated from wastewater samples and measured the levels of antibiotics. The third approach was to look at the prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the corresponding samples. The project was initially run in parallel to a European project in which the same method for detecting ARGs was used. The European counterpart was however finished before my sampling campaign was ready, and the plan of shipping my samples alongside the European ones to MSU had to be altered. Since I had many samples to analyze, the research group at MSU offered to host me at their labs so that I could assist with the analysis to reduce the time needed as well as learn the methods.

Erik at Lansing Capitol Building (Capitol of Michigan)

IBA was very generous in accepting my application for a travel grant to stay the two months in Michigan to do the intended work. James Tiedje is a University Distinguished Professor and Director at MSU and has vast experience in the field of environmental microbiology. The method I would be using to analyze my samples involves a very large array of qPCR reactions that are run in parallel at the Research Technology Support Facility (RTSF). A very big thanks to Professor Syed Hashsham who leads the environmental engineering lab where the preparation of samples was performed and his colleagues for help with the lab work. Some thanks are also allotted to James Cole, director of the ribosomal database project for allowing me a desk space in his computer labs at times when my designated office area was completely uninhabited.

 

Erik at Sleeping Bear Dunes

Several complications leading up to my stay at MSU and during my stay did make the whole experience a little bit less successful then we would have hoped, but I did learn a great deal about American bureaucracy! I was lucky enough to find a student housing options that relieved some of the strain on the IBA grant budget, and I was also able to travel a bit and see several places in Michigan, including a two-night stay in Chicago and a visit to my American second cousin Krista near Grand Rapids, whom I’ve not met in person until now.

I am very thankful for meeting so many positive and encouraging researchers in a country that has recently been given a very harsh reputation, and even though things don’t always work out as planned, I am also forever grateful to IBA for granting me this opportunity.