Name: Amanpreet Kaur

1. What is your home university, what department and lab are you in?

My home university is the university of Leicester, I will be based in the department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation in Dr Cordula Stovers’ Lab

2. What type of studentship are you on? CASE, iCASE, NPIF etc.

Standard MIBTP Studentship

3. How did you organise your accommodation for the first year?

I lived at home in Leicester during the first year as I would need to travel between three universities.

4. How did you manage commuting to UoW for the first term?

Some weeks were spent travelling by train from Leicester to Nuneaton and then Nuneaton to Coventry Station with a 15-20 minute wait in between. From Coventry train station I would get the bus to Warwick campus. When returning to Leicester I would have to plan according to train times as the trains to Nuneaton are once very hour.

5. How did you organise your mini-projects?

Using the list provided by the programme I selected my away project dependent on the type of work carried out in the lab and ensuring it would be different to my PhD project to gain a wide range of skills and understanding on a separate subject matter, but still included some relevance. My choice was also dependent on ease of travel. It is easier to travel to University of Birmingham from Leicester rather than to Warwick.

6. How did you organise your PIPS?

Through speculative applications – this is still pending for me at the time of writing.

7. Is there anything you wished you'd known before you started?

The amount of travel required and the fact that some of the time for the first mini-project is taken up by the assignments to be handed in at the end of January.