www.uclenterprise.org/

After 5 months of work, were my expectations fulfilled ?

The answer is definitely yes !

Joining a mature student lead society like UCL ES  is like joining your first startup.. Usually there is only 5 to 10 students in the committee, all with different academic backgrounds… And that´s when you learn the importance of a multidisciplinary team..

UCL enterprise society is great for that.  We got people studying  economics,  IT , marketing, finances, engineering, management, science among other disciplines and that made UCL ES such a strong team. This is something we definitely lack in the science world, specially in research where people usually have similar skills.

And above all the important is that the society is run only by students, which really gives you the power to apply all your skills and ideas.Obviously we have amazing advisors which the society opens the doors for you to add to your contact list (very useful in the future…), but at the end all the desicions are student made, and this freedom, which comes with the attached stressfull responsability and pressure, gives usually societies a taste of how the real world is in reality, specially for start ups and entrepreneurs.

My role is about sponsorship and research, where I have focused in getting funding for the society, as well as linking it with research. I have had the privilege also to organize plenty of events too, as well as promoting the society, meeting amazing people, sharing ideas to shape the vision of the society among many other tasks that have awaken and sharpened many skills I would have never developed in the lab.

This has culminated with me starting up two business,  leading to my future goal which is to fusion high tech research with the entrepreneurial world.

Now I am working in trying to develop and promote student lead entrepreneur societies in many Universities and Colleges in Mexico, following the example of NACUE.

Por suerte CONACYT nos da la opción de extender la beca hasta por 1 año más. Y el trámite se ha simplificado, aunque al menos para el año del 2011 no lo anunciaron en su página !

Lo que tuve que hacer es que hay un formato que se llama formato de modificaciones por causa de fuerza mayor

http://www.conacyt.gob.mx/Becas/Becarios/Documents/Formato_Modificaciones_Causa_Mayor.doc

Ahí tienes que poner por cuánto tiempo quieres extender tu beca,  y el porqué, usualmente explicando en un pequeño parágrafo  los logros que has tenido en tu PhD, y  lo que te falta para terminar.

Lo más importante es incluir una carta original firmada por el asesor que explique qué tal ha sido tu desempeño durante tu doctorado, y  de nuevo el porqué necesitas una extensión y de cuánto tiempo.

Ya que tengas eso, los envías por correo (mejor DHL o de ese tipo para que lleguen rápido), y pude tardar de 3 a 4 meses en que te den respuesta, así que es importante enviarla con mucho tiempo de anticipación!!

Saludos !

I love working with people,  unfortunately usually the training you get from PhD does not promote that.. How many times I have seen researchers working always alone.. How many papers with just two authors. A supervisor and a lonely PhD student.. People prefer usually to work alone.. Why ? Because they can be in total control of what they do.. Because they don´t want to accept somebody else ideas may be better, because people are not doing similar things.., and well reasons are easy to find..

The fact is that if you give them the choice to decide how they want to work, as it usually happens in research, people will prefer to work alone.. And that is such a waste, because working alone means you close the door to help other people..And that shapes your way of being towards helping other people, it becomes a habit.. and then it becomes your philosophy of life..  For example in my lab, very few members I have seen would come to help somebody without been asked.. It is sad, but that is how research makes fellows be.

A few will come and talk about their project for long time, seeking to promote their ideas, which is nice, but they will usually not come asking to offer their help unless they are seeking a big reward.

And it is funny, but I have noticed, a few times people will not accept your help because they do not want to share the credit if the global activity succeed. You can call it papers, or even simpler things like setting up an HPLC or other equipment. The result at the end is that the outcome is far from desirable, taking lots more time and resources to fulfill such activity, affecting the overall group.

So in the other hand, if you manage to help people, as the Dalai Lama said, the biggest reward is not for them, but for you. Now if you help seeking big rewards, be carefull because you may get more frustrated at the end if you do not get all the credit you are looking for, and after a while, you may just decide to close your heart to offer any help.. That would be a pity.. So  help without expecting anything else back.. the rewards may not be tangible… but they will be forever stored in your soul.

The MIB was finished in 2006, and it adequately provides the physical infrastructure, research environment and culture in which cutting-edge research at the interface to biology can flourish.  About infrastructure, I would say they have similar level of equipments and space as other labs I have visited, but what is truly exceptional is that the building was designed to promotes interaction and openness between researchers from different backgrounds. Therefore extra care was taken to remove any physical barriers to research collaboration. Hence almost all the internal professor offices walls are made from transparent glass making the whole office visible from almost any point in the building. Also  all the researchers desks are put together around a huge empty space which covers around 5-7 floors in the middle of the building, giving them visual contact between all of them.

One disadvantage about this design could be a lack of privacy while working.. But well supposedly if you are working you should not be doing anything embarrassing or whatever. Hehe in my case I am lucky in that sense cause I sit in the corner of my office, so If want to close my eyes and take a little nap nobody can spot me :p.. Note that I never really need to do that because my home is just in front of my office so why bother to take a nap in a desk if you can take a nap in your sweet bed ?

Anyway,  coming back to the MIB, something very interesting is that instead of having many several average size labs, they have few huuggge long labs.. Their objective is also to promote more collaborations, and indeed, I seemed like people could work more together.. But that also made me feel that those huge labs were a little bit soulless,  like big automated industrial labs with many PhD hands doing the work… I did not feel comfortable in that sense, I missed my labs where I could immediately see and find my footprint, making that lab belong more to me. Something I noticed also is that they do not focus on any engineering part at all, which is something that really makes the Department of UCL Biochemical Engineering great and unique.

Then after chatting a little with my neighbour, and making sure she wakes up early :p, I went to the lab to focus in learning how to use TECAN. My postdoct will be focused in this equipment, which is an advanced highthroughput microscale automation platform. In this platform I can automate almost a whole pharmaceutical process, from the fermentation, downstream, bioconversion and analysis.. Also the hightrhoughput nature of the platform allows to perform hundreds of processes with different conditions  at the same time, so the possibilties are endless.

So I  dedicated my late morning and afternoon, practicing how to use it, and I felt quite confident at the end. Still I need to solve some complicated questions, hopefully Jaz will be able to help me. My new lab is called automation lab, and it the  was the first lab where I worked in Roberts Building more than 3 years ago..  I still remember the grateful feeling I had the first time I was working in that lab in my PhD early days.. and I those feelings came back again…

But it is ironique, because after working a few weeks in the automation lab, they moved me to the Biocellular lab 120.  And we loved and had so much fun in that lab, all the students became very close, we travelled everywhere, we made a nice little family, we had almost no problems at all,  and as a result, non of us wanted to have his work based  in the automation lab.  We even had to convince Gary to allow us to stay in lab 120 !! (some of use were suppose to work in the automation lab).

Ths time, I could have asked him again,   and don´t take me wrong, obviously I will miss my old lab, but the environment has changed so much since last year, and nowadays,  the change seems still more evident, and also I was interested in a change, so this time I was glad to work in the automation lab, and at least for today, I was so happy.

When the afternoon died and the night was born, I  came back to have some n dinner, and I went out to have a nice walk in Covent Garden. I spotted a lot  of cool new places I will try to come with my new neighbours..After coming back and shopping in Tesco, I  met my friend Pacha who had just come back from Brasil, she is my new neighbour too and ex labmate,  and she is a very nice friend, so I hope I can meet her more often.

I  had time to work on my new prototype for my new business idea, and after a lot of effort, I came with a brilliant idea, which made my prototype be almost ready, so I am very excited to start testing it…

At night I cooked some dinner, mainly seafood, and shared it with Patty, we had a nice chat about our day and headed to our corresponding rooms. After answering some emails to the enterprise society, I prepared myself to sleep. Tomorrow will be meeting full of business and entrepreneurs meetings, mixed with a lot research work, so I better have a good sleep.

We eat like kings oysters, duck, salads, cheese, wine, roast pork,  grilled beef, snails… and all was sooo good..

In England I am thankfull they opened my culinary world to other cultures like Thai, indian, Malaysian and Chinese food… But british food is pale compared to the colour and aroma´s of the French food …

French food was everywhere.. and the best thing is that they had Leffe beer in every bristo pub ! Why can´t english pubs have Leffe also ? Well I cannot complain.. they are all starting to have Leffe…  So yeah  I eat so good I must have gained some good kilos of belly :p

Apart for doing some long fermentations in the basements labs, which luckily were all succesful, and doing lots of reading for my paper and also of Games of Thrones books :p,  this week was full of social life..

On Monday I organized a dinner in my place.. PAtty, Andrea, Achilleas, Shaz and my neighbour came to have some nice delicious food (Patty as usual shared his delicious thai food and I did some tom ka kai !)… We talked as usual about politics, trends, movies for long hours.. it was great..

On Tuesday was my coming back to the gym… Pacha, Patty and Achilleas came too… At the end all my body ached like hell…

On Wednesday I had some lunch with Homam, and then I had a great footy game with the biochem guys in park… Our team was weaker than our opponents, and nevertheless we managed to get a good result.   Then  I saw a movie with Patty at night.. City of God… Great movie !!!  I  had also time to talk to my old friend Karina in Mexico.. We talked around 2 hours in Skype.. It was so good to catch up…

On Wednesday it was Patty´s birthday, and I sang the mañanitas for her, as well as making breakfast and I did the ingredients shopping in  China TOwn !! I remember in my first year how I used to get so lost with all those weird products in the Chinese Supermarkets… Now I know plenty of them and it feels like a normal supermarket :p.

Then in the evening we had a nice small private party to celebrate her birthday with  Air, PAcha, Shaz and Rooney in the Lawer´s pub next door.. We had plenty of beers and lots of fun and Patty was extremely happy..

On Friday I helped her to organize her dinner Party, as well as designing and making some kind of  printing art craft for her surprise present..  Then we had such a great dinner all the biochemical Engineering guys all together.. followed by plenty of drinks and  fun in TCR and in ULU.  I met some nice girls , and I also was able to contact some good friends that I met in business workshop in Cambridge last week, so it was good to make new friends..  Anyway on Saturday at 1 Am after a nice night burger with Shaz and Natalie…  I was ready to go to bed and sleep.

Paris is beautiful, specially with a nice sunny weather…  And I know people may say that Parisians people may be arrogant and sharp with tourists, but in my case I know french.. and that is the key to let them treat you like a proper Parisians..

I love Britain, and don´t misunderstand me…  I love many things about british culture and everyday I blend better in this island.. But  I have always criticized many aspects of the US culture,  and let´s not forget that this culture was forged in grand part from the british, hence many aspects of the british culture are very similar to the US aspects which I dislike, and in those aspects is  where French people delights me..

Parisians minds are full of art, ideas and originality…  Character is everywhere,  image is important, but they understand that the content is the soul of everything.. and they act accordingly.

I was talking to a friend who loves US movies and was assuring they were by far the best in the world… ” What ???? did I said…” I  argued with him the whole night… But then I realized the majority of the people may thing like that..French  people and I are a kind of  different breed of persons.. It is not easy to understand us.. We don´t like  big impressive things… we like the spark in the things..

Anyway, I met some lovely French girls, and made some nice friends, and I had great french food… Sooo gooodddd..

The bad thing about Paris was insecurity.. It seems pickpockets and robbery has increased tremendously in the last 10 years.. I talked to some local people and they all agreed..

I was almost victim of that in a Starbucks..  I was working with all my bags and laptop in a sofa when a girl seated in front of me (without a coffee which was weird and alerted me). In resume she tried  for more than 1 hour to earn my trust, talking to me, asking me to care of her stuff etc etc but everything seemed kind of fake…Suddenly I noticed she was kind of secretly communicating with a guy kind of hidden next to the door in the Starbucks.. the guy had a motorcycle helmet.. Everything was clear to me.. She was waiting for me to ask her to take care of my stuff whenever I would go to the toilet.. and then bang who knows what she may have chosen to steal… Luckily as Mexicans we spot those kind of people easily ( or we are also full of paranoia ? ) ..I told the Starbuck staff and left for a little restaurant next door to enjoy some nice French food..

Homam, Pacha and Muz invited me to this workshop in the last minute and I was more than glad to go.

The idea was to prepare an hypothetical presentation of a condensed business plan, and try to convince investors to put money on your idea (Dragon´s Den style).  The good thing is that plenty of expert advisors are there to help you (or confuse you :p).

Arriving to the business workshop in Cambridge

It was such a great training, and Cambridge University is actually the No1 in the world in translating cutting edge science into businesses, and I love the concept of training PhD students not to be afraid to commercialize their ideas and to be their own boss :p.

Our cool Symbiotica Team !

We arrived to a very nice place, which looked like a great mansion with huge gardens, and  after some inspiring presentations, we started devising our own business.

In our first day everything was very smooth and the future looked bright, we developed an amazing business plan, and we were proud and confident… We even went to bed early after a great social dinner where I made some good new friends from UCL. Next day we thought we could even finish the presentation in the morning by the time real investors were talking about real cases of new business companies’ lead by PhD students.

Working hard

And then the Sigma Aldrich expert mentor came and convinced us our business plan would never work…. He had strong arguments that we could not elude… So we started creating a new idea that looked great which would involve selling the company in 3 years and become rich !

That sweetness only lasted until the next expert business mentor came… which convinced us that sounded like we were not passionate our idea and that we did not want to take the full potential of our business… Nevertheless I guess he was wrong… we shouldn´t have listened to him,  because we decided to change our idea again to a more ambitious business plan, which I have a feeling  ended up extremely ambitious !

Our presentation was full of character and innovation,  Muz played his role of  eminence Dr Khan impressively, and Homam and Pacha did a great job too … They are such talented guys… We definitely got the best idea by far and people really liked it.The learning experience was huge, so if you can participate in Biotech Yes, I would strongly recommend it .

I saw my friends Murni and Homam, we had some nice talks about research.  Murni had her Mass spec results and we analyzed and compared them with mine. I learnt even more about MS and I will include that data in my thesis. With Homam we discussed about whole cell biocatalytic reactions. He will use microfluidics for that so that sounds very interesting. I need to send him some of my previous results to characterize the whole cells.  I really love working with them and Patty, we made some very nice collaborations.. They are such great guys… They made the lab so amazing..

Then I had an appointment with  Patrick, another PhD student. It was the first time I met him,  he will help me doing a 20 L fermentation to produce my cells with my synthetic de novo pathway. I contacted him by Email two days ago, and quickly we agreed to collaborate.  We planned the fermentation set all the equipments,  he was very cool.   I love meeting new people in research who love to help and collaborate.

After having a nice Thai lunch with Patty and Akin, I did some writing and then I was very busy and I shouldnt had played footy, but  many good friends were going to play and I could not resist running a little bit after the ball.

The game was great in regents park.  Me and Homam played with other random guys againstt all the Biochem team. We started trashing them around 5 to 1 because our guys were great in attack.  Then we started getting tired, and we gave them an extra player, so they started pressing and scoring,  we did not have defense and suddenly they were already winning 6-5 ! When I realized we were losing, I noticed my stamina came back, it is funny how psycology work.  I new we could win.

It was a strategical game, we had to re-organize our team,  sort out the defense and then we controlled the game again and won 8 to 6.  As I read somewhere,  in war, discipline beats numbers 9 to 10 times…. Well in footy it is the same thing.

I must say I realized I got tired very fast, this month staying all night awaken inspired in writing the thesis have killed my stamina. I really need to sort that out..