Department of Psychology, University of Bath
Nature of the internship:
3 month secondment with the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath
What did the secondment involve?
The three-month secondment in the University of Bath was with Professor Julie Barnett and Dr Iulia Cioroianu analysing spatial data on mutual aid groups established in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic and modelling the distribution of these groups in order to understand their effect on supporting connections between isolated individuals.
During the Coronavirus pandemic online groups, Mutual Aid Groups, formed to connect and support isolated individuals in the community. The aim of our project was to understand the relationship between the characteristics of the local authorities and the creation of the groups as well as the engagement of the community with these groups.
During the project I identified sources for and collated local-authority level data for a variety of variables from multiple sources in the UK and linked them with data for the Mutual Aid Groups into one comprehensive data set. With this data we fit spatial models to analyse the relationship between the creation and membership level of these groups with the characteristics of the local authorities and were able to analyse whether or not there was evidence that these variables had a significant effect on the engagement of the communities with the Mutual Aid Groups. The results from this project will be taken forward to a conference as well as submitted to a journal and there are many avenues for further research projects and collaborations.
Nadeen’s reflections on the experience:
Through this research project I gained further experience in data management which was applicable to my PhD work. The opportunity to work in an interdisciplinary team where I was communicating my work to people from different departments was invaluable for my work beyond my PhD, especially the chance to gain an insight into research in academia beyond my PhD.
I highly recommend taking on such a secondment, as the experience of research across multiple departments is incredibly valuable.
Comments from Nadeen’s supervisor:
During this secondment, Nadeen gained experience collating and modelling complex spatial datasets. She encountered and devised her own solutions to problem she does not face in her PhD research including changing local government boundaries over time and model selection. Nadeen has returned to her PhD research for several months now, and I can see that the experience tackling these problems in collaboration with a wider research team has given her new tools to reflect on and improve decisions she made in her research prior to starting the secondment. Nadeen shared her experiences with other PhD students through a presentation to my spatial statistics research group, and I believe it will shape her own career goals in the future.
My communication and collaboration skills benefitted from this experience, and I learnt about the working environment within a private company in the software industry
I would absolutely recommend such an experience...to get an understanding of how valuable mathematical research can be in such a diverse set of problem domains
I gained insight into what it would be like to have a career in industry. It was great to experience the culture in the offices, and the learn about processes they use to progress research and development projects.
It was a great networking opportunity and a chance to experience what it would be like to work for Roche as a company.
It has been a fun and constructive year...being away from a close supervision for one year helped strengthening my discipline and independence
Much has been achieved with this visit and more is expected to come from it. All in all, it has been a fruitful experience, and I’d be happy to recommend it to both students and supervisors.
...this placement has built a long-lasting collaboration for me which I believe will be extremely useful if I pursue academia in the future
...this research visit provided me with an invaluable opportunity to work and network with world leading experts
I highly recommend the internship to PhD students who are curious about research impact and policy and who are looking to gain work experience beyond academia and industry.
The opportunity to work in a fast paced, collaborative environment taught me a lot about both the internal workings of government and about best practises working in an agile environment.
