Katia Hougaard

Hello everyone, my name is Katia Hougaard. I am a postgraduate research student in plant biology at Imperial College London.

I'm originally from the United States of America, but I've spent a lot of my life in the UK and the UK is where I currently live.

What I spend most of my time doing at work is a mix of several different roles. As a postgraduate research student, I am a researcher which involves designing and conducting experiments in plant biology. I'm also a mentor to other students. As a PhD student, I also supervise and mentor undergraduate researchers and master's students doing their research projects in our lab at Imperial College.

I'm also a lab manager and that means that I keep track of how the lab is run, like making sure that we are not running out of supplies and keeping the workspace clean and tidy, as well as making sure that everybody is following the right safety guidelines.

So a typical day would be where I would go to the lab. I would set up and run some experiments with the plants and insects that I was studying.

I might set up the experiment and many experiments in biology take several hours to run so I might get an experiment running and then in the meantime I might do some lab management like checking up on our scientific supplies such as chemicals to make sure that nothing needed to be reordered.

I would often fit in some time to mentor and work with the students like teaching them new lab protocols or having some stimulating discussions about the science that we're doing. I would also have meetings with my supervisor and other colleagues to talk about the directions of the research.

I'd almost always spend some time on data analysis and doing work like writing emails to various colleagues and other people in the scientific world.

Being a PhD student can be a pretty lonely journey at times.

I would say that unlike a lot of typical jobs, being a PhD student is a very self-motivated and independent job. So although it is not a conventional job, it is more of a role during your time as a student.

It is also not like being a student who goes to class and studies for exams. It's really more like having a role as a scientist.

So in a typical day, the people I would interact with would be my fellow postgraduate students, as well as the undergraduate and master's students who I supervise, as well as my supervisor, who is the senior scientist in charge of the lab.

So a lot of the time I'd be working on my own, but I typically meet with other people in order to mentor them to discuss problems or to get ideas for new directions in my own work.

But generally, being a postgraduate research student is quite a one-person journey with some interaction and support from other people in your group. But it's less, it's more individual and less of a team type role.

I would say that one of the best things about my role as a postgraduate research student is that it is never boring or repetitive.

Although the work might be quite mentally exhausting at times and it often involves working quite long hours, I will say that it is very mentally engaging. It is not a boring job. And I think that's because of the variety. As I mentioned before, no two days at work are quite the same.

One day, I might be setting up a big experiment with hundreds of plants and aphids. And then the next day I might be analysing the biological samples to see what concentrations of different plant stress hormones do they have in them.

Some days I might be on my feet all day. Other days I might be sat at the computer all day. Some days may be full of meetings and great scientific discussions. Other days I might just be kind of in my own lane focusing on my work at the lab bench.

So I would say that one of the best things about being a postgraduate research student is the variety. It's never repetitive, never boring.

The hardest part of the role is definitely the workload.

And I think that in my particular PhD experience, the workload was very challenging. That's because due to some issues with funding, our lab could not hire extra lab technicians or postdoctoral researchers to help with the day-to-day running of the lab.

Therefore, in my time as a PhD student, I had to take on a lot of the lab manager and co-supervisor roles that would usually be shared out among more PhD students and more post-docs. So I'd say that the workload was the most challenging part of it.

I think that if the workload had been spread out among more people, it wouldn't have been as challenging.

My journey to get into my role as a postgraduate research student was through looking for PhD positions.

For a lot of people in the sciences, the way to build a scientific career is to do an undergraduate degree in the science of your choice, in my case, plant biology. And here in the UK, it's more common to do a one-year master's program and then segue into a PhD program.

How I went about it, I went about it pretty much in this kind of timeline. And what I did was is that I looked around for many different PhD roles starting in my final year as an undergraduate student.

How I went about finding the right PhD for me was by looking at different universities that I would consider attending and then looking up the professional profiles of different supervisors who specialize in plant biology.

From there, I would write them a letter of introduction and ask to have a video chat or to visit them at their university and have a tour of their lab. I felt like this was a really good way to find the right supervisor and the right project and workplace culture.

Because I did go and talk to some supervisors and I could just tell that probably our personalities wouldn't be a great fit for such a long-term and involved serious project as doing a PhD together.

But I think that with Imperial College and my wonderful supervisor, Professor Colin Turnbull, I really struck gold with that because he has been a wonderful supervisor, so supportive and just, you know, somebody with a great scientific philosophy and just somebody who's been just a joy to work with, I'd say.

I think it prepared me very well. So I knew ever since I was a kid, maybe the age of some of the folks watching this, that I wanted to grow up to be a scientist of some kind.

So what I did was is that I really applied myself to studying all the different science courses leading up to college and in college. I chose biology as my major. I did my undergraduate education back in the USA, just for your information.

And what I did was is that I studied biology with a concentration in plant biology, but most importantly, I made sure to gain undergraduate research experience during my undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Austin. There, and I'm sure at many other universities, they have what's called a freshman research initiative, and that is a program that helps undergraduates gain real hands-on experience of doing science in the research labs of the university.

So I was in this program and also a volunteer researcher with Dr. Stan Roux doing research on plant biology, looking at how stomata open and close. It was a great project.

And for me, I felt like that was kind of a great preparation for postgraduate research because it taught me the kind of basics of what is a scientific method, what is the workplace culture and structure of a research lab, and even the basics of how to write scientific reports and papers and how to present your findings to professional audience.

So if any of the people watching want to do science when they're a bit older, if there are any opportunities to do undergraduate or even before college level research volunteering, I highly recommend getting that experience.

That's a great question.

So for me, my research project as a PhD student was on the plant immune system. Not a lot of people know that plants actually have an immune system, but it is completely biologically different from the human immune system.

The plant immune system is the biological process by which plants defend themselves against diseases caused by things like viruses, bacteria, fungi, and fungus-like organisms.

They also have defenses against herbivores, include things like cows, deers, and rabbits, but also things like insects, which also feed on plants and can damage them.

My research on the plant immune system has a very strong link with global food security because global food security relies on protecting crops against pests and diseases to ensure our, the human race's food security, so that we have enough to eat.

But the problem is that for a long time, plant protection has relied on environmentally dangerous chemicals. And by understanding more how the plant immune system works and what plants need in order to do their own most effective self-defense, we can find out how to protect crops from pests and diseases without destroying the environment at the same time.

I have to say that I was given a lot of very good and accurate and realistic advice during my college experience. Ever since I was probably around 20 or so, I knew that I wanted to do science when I was older and more mature.

And what I did is I started talking to scientists. Like I would reach out to them over social media, like LinkedIn, and have a chat with people who are plant biologists. I would talk to my teachers in college who are also researchers and ask them about their career journeys and what it was like being in grad school.

I also made sure to befriend a lot of grad students while I was an undergraduate myself so I could get more of the shall we say not so polished view of what being a grad student was really like, both the good sides and the not so good sides.

So I would say that I received a lot of helpful and realistic advice about being a graduate student when I was an undergrad, and I think it helped me prepare for some of the more challenging things I encountered.

The advice that I didn't get was what to do if things go really wrong in your PhD. Although my research went all right, during the time I was a postgraduate research student, a lot of very difficult things happened in my personal life. And also we had the global COVID pandemic, which is kind of a big deal.

So I think that I would have liked to have had more advice on how to cope and how to modify my timeline and PhD expectations when facing a lot of unexpected pressures and traumatic experiences in the world situation and my personal situation, because I think maybe I assumed that everything would be smooth sailing in the global and personal world while I was working on my PhD, but sadly it wasn't.

So yes, I would say that that's the advice I wish I could have gotten more of.