Yaning Wu

Yaning Wu

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

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!

next week

CONFERENCE TIME! I’ll be mostly off from Tuesday to Thursday while I attend the British Blood Transfusion Society’s 2024 convening. I’m looking forward to engaging with transfusion professionals from diverse fields, especially those who work directly with the blood service. For the rest of the week (and whenever I have a free moment), I’ll be moving forward with the design of that international collaborative study, improving existing analyses, and adding sophistication and clarity to my documentation of proposed work.

outside the lab

I attended our biomedical campus’s wellbeing festival on Tuesday, which meant learning about poo, estimating the sugar content of common groceries, petting therapy dogs, measuring my reflexes, and observing CPR competitions.

on the reading list

Cox ER, Marwick KFM, Hunter RW, Priller J, Lawrie SM. Dialysis and plasmapheresis for schizophrenia: a systematic review. Psychol Med. 2020 Jun;50(8):1233-1240. doi: 10.1017/S0033291720001324.

weekly photo

image Poster photoshoot :)

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 2, 2024: a week in the life

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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

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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

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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.

aug 12, 2024: a week in the life

2 minute read

Published:

this week

Yes, I kept to my word :) I started preparing for my first-year assessment this week, which included looking through transparent peer review reports from journals like the BMC family to determine what my assessors might ask me about my own research. It’s been a fruitful, though challenging, process, and I’m sure I’ll ideate even more questions in the coming week. I also completed a Nature Masterclasses course on peer review (highly recommend!) and continued to develop the Discussion section of my primary analysis. And I thought I’d finished my poster for my September conference, but I’ve just spotted some potential errors, so that’s a task for next Monday!