Yaning Wu

Yaning Wu

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

april 15, 2024: a week in the life

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this week

I had the privilege to meet with blood donation research experts from across the EU, England, and Australia this Monday as they gave their feedback on our research unit’s completed, ongoing, and proposed work. I learned about the current priorities in our field and was inspired by our visitors’ engagement with my many questions! During the rest of the week, I read around the systematic review and meta-analysis literature to determine the scope for developing new methods for synthesising multiple studies (something I’d been inspired to think about during the completion of my own review). I also received feedback on that review chapter from a kind colleague and made important changes, including some slight statistical modifications. Finally, I’m excited to share that my abstract was selected for poster presentation during a research sharing event on the 29th with our clinical colleagues, which brings me to …

next week

Though I made a rough start on my poster presentation in a week’s time, I still need to refine my results and interpretation sections. I’m also looking forward to getting some feedback on colleagues who are both familiar and unfamiliar with the work I intend to present. Outside of that deadline-driven work, I’m planning to prepare slides to share the results of my first primary data analysis with unit colleagues in the coming week, which includes making sure I’ve interpreted my own results in the best (and most cautious) way I can!

outside the lab

I had the pleasure of hosting two PhD (DPhil, as they say in the “other place”) students on Saturday for a walk around town and some lunch at a fast-casual Korean place. It was strange and wondrous to transport myself back in time and to share research stories, which we couldn’t avoid despite it being the weekend!

on the reading list

Karregat JHM, Blokhuis D, Quee FA, van den Hurk K. Iron supplementation: A qualitative study on the perception of blood donors, blood collection staff and donor physicians. Vox Sanguinis. 2024;119(1):16-26.

weekly photo

IMG_7719 A very important massage.

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!

november 16, 2024: a week in the life

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this week

It’s been a week of presentations! On Wednesday, I presented findings from my first primary analyses in an intimate setting and had a great conversation with the attendees. On Thursday, I presented to a larger audience, including senior scientists within the Department of Public Health and Primary Care. I’ve also built on my manuscript draft for that primary analysis, which I hope to share with my supervisor soon. I’ve also spent several hours trying to improve on a proposal for a simulation modelling analysis according to comments from my supervisor. Finally, I’ve been working through final admin procedures for our accepted review paper!

november 9, 2024: a week in the life

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this week

Whew … it’s getting late. It’s almost bedtime and I’m still on my work computer! I would never consider this acceptable normally but have made an exception for this chaotic week. I’ve continued to respond to my supervisor’s comments on my primary analyses, realising that I will need to make substantial changes to the variables used. I’ve also made a dummy dataset that enables me to test my simulation modelling code before I receive the “real” data … though I haven’t done most of that testing yet. And perhaps most importantly, I’ve submitted revisions for our systematic review manuscript, which has now been accepted for publication!!! I hope to share the published paper with you all within the next two weeks.

november 2, 2024: a week in the life

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this week

Time for an apology … I forgot to upload a blog post last week! I have little excuse, except that I had some lovely friends visiting and might have forgotten about this habit amidst the chaos. Anyway, I’m back now, and I come with exciting news! Two reviewers have submitted their comments after I submitted my review manuscript a month ago, and I’ve already begun responding to them. I hope to complete these “minor revisions” (in the journal’s Associate Editor’s words) within a week and move this work closer to publication. During the rest of the week, I’ve been attempting to improve the predictive power of a model I’ve fit within a planned simulation model, revising my thesis draft of my first primary analyses following feedback from my supervisor, conducting a second review of a transfusion-related manuscript, and finalising data access request documents for a near-future (I hope!) project. Things are changing fast, and I’m trying my best to keep up.

october 14, 2024: a week in the life

2 minute read

Published:

this week

I’M BACK! After a period of annual leave from Oct 3-18, I’ve returned to Cambridge and am currently working from my college. In the few days before my travels and the day and a half since, I submitted our review paper for publication, made a lot of slide decks to share proposed ideas with my supervisor, fleshed out a manuscript version of my first primary analysis, and liaised with the undergraduate students who I’ll be leading seminars for in a few weeks :) I kept an eye on emails while away, so I have little to catch up on on that front. I’m still reeling, though, from a pile of outstanding to-dos.