may 27, 2024: a week in the life

this week

I DID IT! I brought my thoughts together in time this week and drafted an abstract for submission to a conference I’d like to attend this September. The unconventional nature of both the exposure and outcome my study uses has caused a lot of doubt in the way I conceptualise my work, but I was thankful for my supervisor’s reassurance that this was perfectly normal. I think that my approach to this work will continue to change until the day I submit my thesis, but I’m here for the ride. Otherwise, I improved a proposal for some new analyses that have much more ambitious data requirements and look forward to sharing that with colleagues in the next week.

next week

On Monday, I’ll be lucky enough to meet with one of our Dutch collaborators who runs donor cohort studies via their blood service, known as Sanquin. For the rest of the week, I’ll continue to write up my revised primary analysis (mostly the Results and Discussion sections). I also hope to gather some feedback for my systematic review and meta-analysis from senior colleagues so that we can submit our manuscript! It’ll be my first “official” first-author peer-reviewed publication, and I’m both excited and terrified.

outside the lab

Nothing much going on this week. I did take a day away from the office to wander around Mill Road, a warm international neighbourhood of very-very-upscale grocers and selling-nearly-everything supermarkets. I was reminded that I need to get out more … Also, I have slowly divorced myself from Instagram by deleting the app on my phone, though some of my previous time-wasting, instead of disappearing, has been transferred to YouTube instead …

on the reading list

Timmer TC, de Groot R, Habets K, Merz E-M, Prinsze FJ, Atsma F, et al. Donor InSight: characteristics and representativeness of a Dutch cohort study on blood and plasma donors. Vox Sanguinis. 2019;114(2):117-28.

weekly photo

Exam time at my college.

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!