This post is shared by our DTP student Ella Howes, who is based at University of Leeds.
Introducing When Ella Met Phil:
Earlier this year, I started a diary about PhD life. Except in this diary, my PhD was called Phil. And I very much wrote about them as if they were my partner…
Because you see, doing a PhD is very much like being in a relationship! Some days you’re completely obsessed with each other, and other days you desperately need some time apart…
I met my Phil two years ago (online!) and soon after moved cities to be with them. It felt a lot like Married at First Sight – except I never got to wear a pretty dress (and I still don’t get out much).
Every week, I share a few of my diary entries about Phil in a new Substack (blog!) – called When Ella Met Phil.
My aim is to provide a (hopefully!) more enjoyable insight into the highs and lows of PhD life. Because PhDs can be very isolating. With a lot of time in our heads! It can be hard to know what’s normal or not…like for example, is it normal to get annoyed by Phil’s monotony (or am I just being an unsupportive partner?!).
Felicity is a second-year PhD student based at University of Birmingham.
Dementia is a serious brain condition that produces a decline in cognitive ability and ultimately results in death. More than 55 million people have dementia across the world; with approximately 60-80% of those cases caused by Alzheimer’s disease1. The global cost of dementia was 1.3 trillion US dollars in 20191; and there are currently no treatments that can cure dementia. Therefore, developing techniques that can reduce the risk of getting a diagnosis of dementia is important. My PhD is focusing on optimising the delivery of exercise-based interventions; as modifiable lifestyle factors, such as physical activity, diet, and smoking, can account for up to 40% of the risk of getting dementia2.
Blood Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) is a blood-based protein that is responsible for the growth and maintenance of cells in the brain3. People with dementia typically have low levels of BDNF, but research has shown that exercise can increase BDNF levels3. However, the optimal intensity of exercise to increase BDNF levels is unclear.
Therefore, the study I’m running at the moment is aiming to determine the optimal intensity of exercise to increase levels of BDNF. Healthy male and female participants have been invited to the lab to complete four exercise sessions on an exercise bike. In the first session all participants complete a maximal exertion test, where they are encouraged to as cycle for as long as they can whilst the resistance on the bike increases. The following three sessions are completed in a random order by all participants:
Moderate Intensity: Participants cycle for 30 minutes at 65% of their maximum capacity.
High Intensity: Participants complete 4 bouts of intense cycling (4 minutes each) at 90% of their maximum capacity, interspersed with 3 minutes of recovery.
Very High Intensity: Participants complete 8 bouts of very intense cycling (30 seconds each) at 150% of their maximum capacity, interspersed with 3 and a half minutes of recovery.
Blood samples are collected from participants before the start of each session, straight away after they finish the exercise session, and then a final sample is taken after 30 minutes of rest. The blood samples are then processed to separate the blood into different parts, which we use to measure the levels of BDNF.
We’re still in the process of running exercise sessions and analysing the levels of BDNF in the blood from participants at the moment, but we hope to have completed this study by Autumn 2024!
Livingston, G., Huntley, J., Sommerlad, A., Ames, D., Ballard, C., Banerjee, S., … & Mukadam, N. (2020). Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2020 report of the Lancet Commission. The Lancet, 396(10248), 413-446.
Ng, T. K. S., Ho, C. S. H., Tam, W. W. S., Kua, E. H., & Ho, R. C. M. (2019). Decreased serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD): a systematic review and meta-analysis. International journal of molecular sciences, 20(2), 257.
This blog post is written by one of our current TMRP DTP students, Ella Howes. Ella is based at the University of Leeds and is a first year student.
If you are overthinking what to put for ‘thoughts on project’, then don’t worry. I did too! Even though I had lots of thoughts about the PhD, I wasn’t sure which thoughts were the right ones to include…
What I am realising now, two months into the PhD, is there are so many directions you can take a project in. And that direction is really influenced by your particular interests and experience. So, I suppose this section is your chance to give a bit more insight into what your individual approach to the PhD would be (for which there are no right or wrong answers!).
Here is how I approached it…
Before answering this question, I spent time brainstorming different ideas. I put down anything that came to mind when I first read through the project description. I thought about what particularly interested me about the specific project and what I was most curious about. I also thought about how I could build on the ideas suggested in the project description. After listing all these ideas down, I looked to see which ideas I could develop further.
I then focused on my three ‘top’ ideas. These were the ideas I was most interested in. They were also ideas that gave a bit of insight into the direction I wanted to take the PhD in. For example, I spoke about a framework I thought would be helpful to use to structure the results of a systematic review. I shared a bit about why I thought this framework would be really valuable to the research. I also suggested a few questions I might want to ask in qualitative interviews.
You could just focus on one idea specifically -I just about approached it with three which then meant I couldn’t go into as much detail because of the word limit
Here are a few other hints and tips to help with your thinking. But I want to emphasise that this is so project dependent, and these tips are just to prompt thinking (they are not hard rules to follow!).
Talk with your potential supervisor before submitting your answer! This is an opportunity to sense check your thinking and see if it aligns with where your supervisor sees the PhD going (actually this is the only hard rule I’d say to follow!)
Try not to repeat what you have said elsewhere in the application (or even what’s written in the project description). Save your words to share your individual thinking!
Some other general ideas of things to include could be:
What methods you might use and why?
Is there an interesting avenue you might want to take the research? Why?
Of course, there are so many dependencies with research (and what you can focus on). But that shouldn’t inhibit your thinking. This is your chance to show your individual thoughts on how you envisage shaping the PhD!
In March 2022, I was finishing my Master’s at Queen’s University Belfast and eagerly awaiting the outcome of my interview for the TMRP Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP). Upon hearing that I was successful and the excitement of it, I couldn’t have anticipated the great things it would bring. As well as creating the foundations to my PhD over the first year, the TMRP has provided a variety of events and resources, including funded trips to an international trial methodology conference and skills workshops across the UK, access to working groups where research is shared and discussed, and events to connect DTP students with industry partners. These have been fantastic for learning about the field of methodology research, connecting with other students, the TMRP team and learning about ongoing research. The DTP is great for connecting students with one another, the TMRP team and its researchers, bringing a sense of community and encouragement by seeing the reach your own research can have.
In addition to the great experiences the TMRP has provided, there has still been plenty of time to develop my PhD project. My project is focused on trial attrition (participants dropping out of trials before completion), and aims to build a model that predicts the risk of attrition occurring for different reasons, based on the characteristics of participants and trials they participate in. If successful, outputs of this model could point to the aspects of trial designs that increase the risk of attrition occurring and the types of participants at higher risk of dropping out. This would be useful to trialists and methodology researchers interested in developing strategies that can maximise retention (keeping participants in trials until completion). Given the work involved, I have joined the Statistical Analysis and Trial Conduct working groups within the TMRP to keep updated on similar work.
It’s hard to believe how quickly the first year has progressed, and I look forward to what coming years will bring, both for my project and being a part of the TMRP. To readers considering a PhD or beginning on their journey, I cannot emphasise enough the importance of enjoying the process. Try not to get too caught up in seeing the end goal at the beginning, because there will likely be roadblocks and changes along the way. Your first year is the best time to get familiar with the skills you need to reach that end goal, and will set up the following years to pursue it. You are a part of a team during the project, both within your university and within your organisation, be it the TMRP or another body. Use available resources and jump at opportunities for training and events that accommodate your schedule. Lastly, check-in with yourself frequently to reflect on your work and how you are doing.
Thanks for reading and I wish any new and future PhD students all the best, and look forward to meeting new DTP members at the next ICTMC conference in Edinburgh!
When I tell people I’m doing a PhD in cancer research, they pretty much always assume that I’m in the lab wearing a white coat curing cancer – and until I came across the MRC-NIHR TMRP DTP, I didn’t know that methodology projects existed either! I had never pictured myself doing a PhD as I really don’t get on with lab work, but I knew I was interested in clinical trials; so when my friend sent me the advert for a project called “increasing representation of underserved groups in randomised oncology trials”, I was intrigued. I have a background in pharmacology, but I’ve always been more interested in whole patients rather than their cells! I decided to apply although I thought there was no chance of my application being successful, but after a few months, I was pleasantly surprised with an offer.
The first 3 months of my project were a whirlwind, and included a lot of training, meeting new people, reading papers, and even the chance to attend the International Clinical Trials Methodology Conference in Harrogate. This is where I first met some of the other students on the PhD programme, which was great as it meant I now had some contacts who were working in a similar area to me. We have since met again for training events in Manchester and Liverpool, which were fantastic opportunities provided by the TMRP DTP leadership team to learn new skills and socialise with others in the PhD cohort. It’s been really useful to make these contacts as the other students in my office are working in very different areas to me, so it’s encouraging to know that there are people I can speak to who are using similar methods. I also became the student rep for the TMRP DTP leadership team during this time, which is a position I’d suggest applying for as it gives you an insight as to how the programme is run, encourages you to speak with the other students in your cohort, and allows your voice to be heard!
Since January, my project has really started to take shape. I’m currently working on 3 sub-projects with a focus on bladder and head & neck cancers which all satisfy a different aim of my project. These are an audit of demographic data of patients who have taken part in our trials, a scoping review of the contents of eligibility criteria of oncology trials, and some mixed methods research at a hospital to try and learn why some people are offered a clinical trials and some are not, and also why some people choose to accept participation and some don’t. I’m hoping to use the results of these projects to develop and test an intervention to increase participation of underserved groups in clinical trials.
As I work towards submitting my transfer viva report, I can reflect on how far I’ve come in such a short time of being a PhD student. Whilst it feels like it’s zoomed by and some days are certainly busier than others, I’m very proud of the fact that I’ve developed my own research for the first time, and I can’t wait to continue making progress!
mrctmrpdtp.com 