Tajrian Chowdhury
Published: 11 December 2024
Final year PhD student specialising in synthetic rare-earth chemistry who used PhD Mobility Funding from the College of Science and Engineering to go on a research visit to Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany to work in the group of a pioneering rare-earth chemist Professor Reiner Anwander.
As a final year PhD student specialising in synthetic rare-earth chemistry, the award of a PhD Mobility Funding from the College of Science and Engineering allowed me to go on a research visit to Tübingen (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany) to work in the group of a pioneering rare-earth chemist Professor Reiner Anwander.
Throughout the research visit, I learnt new technical and transferable skills, such as the understanding of the wide range of chemistry projects undertaken and characterisation techniques employed by the Anwander group. The local research facilities available at Tübingen were state-of-the-art and similar to in-house facilities at Glasgow, therefore research work of similar nature was easily carried out at Tübingen, as that in Glasgow.
Since I currently work in a relatively small research group (4 PhD students), it was a completely different experience to work in a large research group (x25 Anwander group members). Working in a different cultural environment, where the language of day-to-day communication is not English meant that I had some difficulties in communicating initially, but I was fine with communicating in English mostly and did not face any problems overall as an international student. Instead, I have learnt more about the research/local culture and working environment there in Germany, and my learning was not only limited to research experience as an international student but also working in a different environment outside the UK.
Inspired by my research visit to Germany and learning the culture, I have also been learning German for about 7 months now! I anticipate that the connections and networks I built with the researchers there to be fruitful for my future research career. The purpose of this research visit was to establish a high-profile collaboration to enable and deliver high-impact science.
The work in Germany was my first experience of what being an independent researcher will be like and how to manage a project on my own in the future. A high-profile international postdoctoral research associate (PDRA) position is my next step post-PhD, and this research visit has been an ideal training for it.
Recently, a manuscript was published based on my research work at Tübingen. Such a visit also acted as the seed for a high-profile and productive collaboration between Chemistry at Glasgow and Tübingen, all thanks to the PhD Mobility Funding.
First published: 11 December 2024