From a postdoc: how could supervising a studentship benefit your professional development?

Posted on February 3, 2022   by Microbiology Society

Each year, the Microbiology Society awards a number of grants that enable undergraduates to work on microbiologyresearch projects during the summer vacation and provide early- and mid-career scientists with the opportunity to gain supervision experience. Over the next few months, we’ll be posting a series of blogs from members who were awarded Harry Smith Vacation Studentships in 2021. This week is postdoctoral researcher Dr Carly Bliss, Cardiff University. Carly recently supervised undergraduate student Louise Stack during her summer project, which investigated utilising chimeric adenoviruses to dissect neutralising antibody responses against therapeutic viral vectors.  

Receiving this studentship enabled me to develop my career in several different ways. Firstly, the financial contribution via the Harry Smith Vacation Studentship attracted a high quality and enthusiastic candidate to carry out a very specific project related to a grant proposal. The consumables budget allowed this preliminary work to be completed in full, with some basic reagents that were required to run the assays, for which I did not currently have funding for an as early career researcher. 

The opportunity to fully supervise a student and plan a short yet successful placement, has undoubtedly benefited my professional development with respect to managing the associated responsibilities and teaching of an undergraduate student. I also enjoyed and embraced working with Dr Luned Badder, a postdoctoral researcher who shared several of the teaching and supervisory responsibilities, and with whom I benefitted extensively from scientific discussions and interactions. Importantly, this successful collaboration with Dr Badder is likely to continue beyond this eight week project.  

Finally, the data generated will be included in my upcoming fellowship applications, and forms strong proof-of-concept data for my proposed vaccine development research going forward. 

Find out more about how supervising a vacation studentship student could benefit your professional development in this blog.  

Applications for our 2022 scheme are now open and will close on 20 February 2022. Find out more and apply on our website. For any questions, please contact [email protected].