Rosaleen Gilmore

May 31, 2009

London is FANTASTIC!! I am having so much fun.  I am living in Thoresby House which is located in the Angel/Islington area.  I am in a room by myself which is really nice, and the room is not actually as small as I expected.  The house is located in a really nice area of London; it is not so upscale that all of the prices are high, it is not in a slum area, and there are not many tourists around here.  The orientation week went well.  I have met some nice students in my house and we have done a lot of touristing and sightseeing this weekend.  The pictures below were taken at Big Ben, at St. James Palace and at Parliament. I had my interview for my internship on Wednesday and it went great - I start work tomorrow morning.  My boss/advisor is Brenda Thorpe; she is really nice and a real academic-type.  She has done a lot of work with algae and marine botany.  She also has a graduate student who she advises who is working on diatoms at the moment.  We are going to determine exactly what I am going to be working on during my time here tomorrow.  I will let you know more details of what I will be doing when I know myself. 

June 5, 2009

I am having so much fun in London, I do not know how I am going to make myself go back to the States.  Here is an update of what I am doing in my internship.  I am working in the research labs of Queen Mary's Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of every week, for a total of six weeks.  My normal day goes from 10-6.  I spend most of my time with Brenda, my adviser, but I also do some things on my own.  We are doing research on Emiliana Huxleyi, which is a coccolith-bearing algae.  We are trying to discern the effects that the plates have on the physiology of the organism.  This past week I inoculated a culture with normal calcium, and a culture with very low calcium in order to grow a culture with and a culture without plates.  We are going to use/have used a lot of techniques that I have seen before, but there are also a few techniques that I am getting to learn, which is good.  I feel as though I have fit into the community already.  I am consistently working in three different labs, so I get to mix with masters students, doctorate students and professors alike.  Most of my work will be in the lab, but Brenda and I did go down to the Royal Docks to collect diatom samples on Tuesday, and we are definitely going to the Cliffs of Dover when the tides are favourable. 

June 18, 2009

I am about halfway through my time at Queen Mary's, which is really sad. I am still thoroughly enjoying my time in London and my work at QMUL. Brenda and I are still working with Emiliania huxleyi, but we have also started working with Nannochloropsis oculata. We are mainly interested in Carbon and Calcium limitation, especially as it concerns biofuels and ocean acidification (two of the main hot topics at the moment in the field of environmental biology). We spend a lot of time counting and measuring samples to determine growth rates in different nutrient conditions. This past week we performed two experiments: one experiment on light saturation and limitation which Brenda designed, and one experiment on carbon limitation which I designed. Brenda has really come to trust my judgment, knowledge, and laboratory technique and we work very well together. It is great to know that what I have learned in the classroom and lab at Gwynedd has prepared me to work in a postgraduate research laboratory. We have at least two more experiments planned for Monday and Tuesday of this week, and then on Wednesday we are going to go to the Cliffs of Dover (I will be sure to take pictures). I hope all is well in PA, although I hear that you are not having much of a summer. The weather here has been unpredictable, which is normal for London. The pictures below were taken at Shakespeare's Globe Theater (left) and at Regents' Park (right).

September 5, 2009

Well, my internship in London and my summer have come to an end, unfortunately. I had an incredible summer. I have learned many things, both in the laboratory as well as in Life. My research with Brenda has been very interesting and rewarding; it has also taught me that I would be very happy working in a research lab - something that I have had doubts about in the past in considering my future. Brenda and the other professors and students at QM have been extremely supportive and welcoming of me, for which I am very grateful. This internship has really helped me in deciding what I want to do after graduating from GMC.

After my internship ended, a few friends who I met in London and I went for a ten-day vacation in Europe. We visited Mykonos and Athens in Greece, as well as Rome, Perugia and Flourence in Italy. I also visited Paris, Chartres and St-Omer in France with a few friends who were visiting from the US. I ended my summer by visiting family in Portaferry and Belfast in Ireland. I cannot believe how many new places I have seen, how many new friends I have made, and what a fantastic experience this summer has been.