This week, Jac van Driel, PhD student at UCL shares with us his deepest thoughts on how to write the manuscript of his PhD thesis. Hoping you will enjoy: “An Ode to the Coffee House”. Like many cordial expressions of civilised society, Covid-19 has plunged café culture to into stasis with the permanence of its condition not yet known. Pre-crisis, my hedonistic consumption of coffee use ...[Read More]
Now that the craziness of the first online EGU ever is over (it was great, wasn’t it?), it is time to sink back into our lazy lockdown routine. Essential part of this routine? Watching bad science movies of course! So here is the top 5 geodynamic movies you should watch this lockdown! Get some popcorn, video call some friends, and laugh while all the geodynamic principles you hold dear are b ...[Read More]
We are all studying geodynamics, but what does that really mean? Do we limit ourselves to the mantle? The lithosphere? The equations we solve? In this Wit & Wisdom post, Colin Hardy, PhD student in fluid dynamics at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, makes his case for an often forgotten boundary condition of mantle geodynamicists: the core. Let us start with the basics and break down th ...[Read More]
It has become inevitable for scientists to move abroad for their jobs. Moving to and living in a new country can be a very exciting, yet also tough experience. In today’s blog post, Irene Bonati (PhD Student at the Earth-Life Science Institute, Tokyo) discusses the challenges and perks that come with the nomad lifestyle of many academics. Research provides a kind of freedom that almost no ...[Read More]
This week, Craig O’Neill, Associate Professor and director of the Planetary Research Center at MacQuarie University shows that not only humans are suffering from the consequences of global warming. The recent Australian bushfire season has precipitated a shift in the Australian – and the world’s – perception of the urgency of addressing climate change. With most of the east ...[Read More]
All blobs are equal, but some blobs are more interesting than other blobs. In this new Wit & Wisdom post, Jamie Ward, PhD student in seismology at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, explores this age-old saying and discusses whether or not LLSVPs are the most important blobs in our lives. Also, there is a picture of a dog. It makes sense, I promise. Large Low Shear Velocity Provinces (LL ...[Read More]
Being a postdoc provides you with an extended training period after receiving your PhD. It is the pathway towards becoming an independent scientist; therefore, it is important to undertake your postdoc in a place where career development is enhanced and supported. Let’s start with a basic yet crucial question: why should I move to another continent? The United States remains the most popular coun ...[Read More]
A scientific career can be a struggle. This week Dave Stegman, Associate Professor at Scripps, draws parallels between being a scientist and being an Antarctic explorer. He dangled in the crevasse, unable to touch the sides; the abyss beneath was hundreds of feet deep; the rope he was suspended from was 14 feet long, connected above to the sledge he had been hauling. Was it luck when his sledge ha ...[Read More]
This week, Antoine Rozel, senior researcher in ETH Zürich, gives us good news about carbon footprint. We can take the global warming problem as a pretext to change some of our arbitrary habits and make our communication much more efficient! Global warming is real and yes we do need to drastically decrease our carbon footprint. I see 3 options: 1) not caring, 2) feeling guilty about it and not doin ...[Read More]
A privilege of being an academic is the freedom to muse, staying faithful to the title of a PhD which is, after all, a doctor of philosophy. In his latest reflection on a topic of importance to all scientific disciplines, Dan Bower (CSH and Ambizione Fellow at the University of Bern) discusses the ambiguity that comes with the separation of data and models. What are data? What are models? You ar ...[Read More]