• Question: @Koi What qualifications do you have and do any of them benefit your field

    Asked by Morgan to Mark, Linda, Franco, Claire on 14 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Franco Falcone

      Franco Falcone answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      Hi Morgan
      all professional qualifications listed in my CV; they certainly benefit me (otherwise I wouldn’t have a clue about what I am doing), whether they benefit the field, I’ll leave that for others to judge.

    • Photo: Linda Anagu

      Linda Anagu answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      @koi, my qualifications are listed in my CV and I believe they have made me a good scientist today. You know I still apply basic multiplication and division in my research. i am still building on qualifications but what I have is enough for my field of study, at least that was what my sponsors told me.

    • Photo: Claire Bourke

      Claire Bourke answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      Hi Morgan, I have GCSEs, A-levels, a university degree in Immunology and a PhD in the immunology of parasitic worms. A PhD is a qualification in which I spent several years investigating the biology of parasitic worms and wrote about and discussed my findings in a big project write-up called a thesis; the experience of designing and conducting the experiments that I needed to investigate these things was a really great preparation for being a scientist as I got to learn how to work in a lab, how to get experiments to work, how to analyse my results and how to communicate them with others in my writing and in person. Throughout all of my career so far I have relied on information and skills that I learnt at school too; I have to calculate concentrations and moles/mass/molarity almost everyday, which I originally learnt in Chemistry; I need to be able to conduct statistical tests like the ones I used in Maths; a bit of a background in Latin helps me with the complicated names of parasites (!); English skills are great basis for writing scientific papers and essays; Geography has helped me to look at parasitic infections on a global scale…etc. etc.

      What I do now is very much a product of what I have learnt before and I am still learning new skills all the time 🙂

    • Photo: Mark Booth

      Mark Booth answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      Hi Morgan

      I have ‘O’ levels, ‘A’ levels, a BSc in Zoology, a PhD in Biology and a Master of Arts by incorporation (a Cambridge University award for my involvement with a college).

      They are all useful in some way because they have helped me develop my career. I found out at school that I was really interested in Biology and used what I learned at school to help me at University. I started learning parasitology at University and this helped me apply for my PhD. My PhD award then allowed me to apply for a fellowship from the Wellcome Trust which kick-started my career. Every time I apply for funding for a project I have to demonstrate I am eligible by listing my qualifications as part of my CV

Comments

  • Photo: Koi

    Koi commented on :

    Hi Morgan,
    I’m sorry about the delay reply! But here I am!
    – I did a high school in THailand (which is equivalent to GCSE and A-Level here)
    – And then repeat the A-Level when I came to UK (very useful! because it learnt things in Thai, now I know what it’s called in English! and also it gave me time to adapt to the new culture)
    – Then I went to a University to do zoology and got a Bachelor of Science (BSc) for that
    – And now I’m on my way to (hopefully) earn a PhD qualification – a degree u do to become very specialised on something and contribute new knowledge to the field by doing research.

    The degrees themselves are useful as a proof that I have passed some certain standard tests and that help my future employers/sponsors/funders decide whether they should support my work or not.

    But apart from the list of qualification, a lot of the knowledge I have learnt through those degree are useful for what I’m doing now (doing biology also need to know maths and it’s useful to have some understanding of chemistry and physics sometimes) but a lot of things I also forget already because I don’t use them much daily. …I think we first need to learn a lot of things to keep many doors of opportunities open for ourselves until we have tried enough and are really really really sure what we want to focus on, then we become more specialised and started to know a lot about a few things.