Yaning Wu

Yaning Wu

PhD student | storyteller | 🇨🇳🇺🇸🇪🇬🇰🇪🇬🇧

april 8, 2024: a week in the life

2 minute read

Published:

this week

Silly me! I spent longer than expected this week fixing mistakes I had made in describing my results. I also ruled out a lot of analyses that I had originally proposed (at least there were some decisions made). At the same time, I spent valuable time interrogating the best measures to use for donor health outcomes, as well as developing some primitive methods work I had begun alongside the drafting of my systematic review and meta-analysis.

next week

I’m looking forward to engaging with blood donation researchers from around the world via a steering committee meeting next Monday! Next week also marks the return of a more “normal” working pattern as more team members return from holidays abroad. I’ll brainstorm some ideas about donation safety with a colleague, inspired by a recent Nature Immunology publication, and do some more reading about advanced methods for determining who benefits most from interventions randomised across place and time.

outside the lab

There hasn’t been much going on this week. However, a big milestone happened a few days ago: the shutting down of MedSupplyDrive UK, the charity that I’ve volunteered with ever since the first UK COVID-19-induced lockdown in March 2020. The team means a lot to me, and I am ever-grateful for our time together and ambition, hope, and invaluable communications experience it brought me during those strange and challenging years.

on the reading list

Bombak AE. Self-rated health and public health: a critical perspective. Front Public Health. 2013 May 20;1:15. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2013.00015.

weekly photo

IMG_7635 Wall art in a neighbourhood beyond the university “bubble”.

about me

I’m Yaning (she/her), a PhD candidate in Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. I am working with colleagues in the Blood and Transplant Research Unit, the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit, and NHS Blood and Transplant (England’s national blood service) to improve the safety and efficiency of voluntary whole blood donation. I’m supervised by the amazing Dr Lois Kim and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. This is my blog about my journey through this candidature, starting from nine months before my transfer of status. Please feel free to reach out at yw645 [at] cam [dot] ac [dot] uk!

september 9, 2024: a week in the life

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this week

I’ve begun implementing some of the feedback from my first-year assessors, which has led to somewhat drastic (though sorely needed) changes to my proposed work. Broadly, though, I’m plowing forward, and am now trying to improve the fit of some models I would like to use for a discrete-event simulation. I also found some small errors in my code for my first primary analysis, so I have been working to correct those and improve that piece of work before I attempt to adapt it for journal submission. Finally, I met with international collaborators and presented a study proposal with short notice, receiving some interesting and useful feedback!

september 2, 2024: a week in the life

1 minute read

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this week

I have some news … it’s unofficial, but I appear to have passed my first-year assessment! There is a good chance that I will be permitted to continue this adventure, albeit with some changes to my project plans. What an honour to have this opportunity to keep moving forward - I will think of this ruling in the days when I am constantly plagued by the inadequacy of my work.

aug 26, 2024: a week in the life

3 minute read

Published:

this week

My mind is blown! It has been a huge week of trying to understand simulation modelling methods, and a few papers that my supervisor recently shared have been instrumental in that process. Luckily, I’m not alone - I have multiple colleagues using those methods. By Saturday (today), I’ve put together a rough draft for a Methods section of a potential thesis chapter or manuscript. I know I’ll rewrite nearly all of that section in months or years, but I’ve seen countless resources advising me to write early! I’ve also been addressing a final round of comments from two co-authors of my systematic review and meta-analysis and am somewhat heartened that this truly appears to be our final round. Finally, I’ve been saturating a printed copy of my first-year report with tiny post-its, which point out all the mistakes I’ve already found in that work, the changes I’ve since made to my study designs, and the over-ambitiousness of the timelines I originally set. My assessment is happening on Thursday, and I hope I’ll be ready …

aug 19, 2024: a week in the life

2 minute read

Published:

this week

Just on time … I submitted my poster for my Glasgow conference on Monday with a few hours to spare! I resisted the urge to place a tiny illustration of me with my polar bear near my contact details, but we’ll see whether that’ll make it onto the printed version … For the rest of the week, I planned my approach to several primary analyses using our blood donor studies, interrogated my first-year report some more, and made minor revisions to my review manuscript! My working days were a little shorter than they usually are this week as I recovered from a jarring weekend, but I’m okay with my progress.