Sunday, November 21, 2010

the first post

My name is Vasili Hauryliuk, and I am trying to figure out what could I possibly do useful in life sciences. The reason I am trying to do that is very simple. Just as a vas majority of freshly (or not so freshly) minted PhDs, I can do nothing but research, so I would better get on with doing it.

However, just as a majority of PhDs, I was never trained to do the research - all I was trained to do is to learn things fast and pass exams (in the uni), and later on, during the grad school, I learned how to get enough data produced and published so that I can defend my degree.

Now I am on my own, and I have to do something radically different. I have to figure out what I want to study, figure out enough facts about the subject I research that I can publish papers about it and than I need to convince the funding bodies that it is interesting enough so as to fund these activities. To make things worse, I am doing it by myself; I have PhD students depend on the succes of the whole affair.

In this blog I will talk about the stuff we do, and why we do it, and the field we do research in. Luckily, we are involved in quite an interdisciplinary effort, so that there is a chance that I will manage to make the whole affair general enough to be interesting outside of our lab.

Shall see.