Rebecca Woodrow

What were you doing before you joined the MRC-DTP?

I was completing my Masters degree in Brain Imaging/Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Nottingham.

Why did you choose to study at the University of Cambridge?

I was mainly drawn to Cambridge because of the specific PhD project being offered, as it really fit with my research interests. After speaking with my supervisor and members of the lab, it seemed like a very friendly environment and a lab I would be honoured to be a part of.

What do you enjoy most about your day-to-day work and the people you work with?

My lab is very diverse with backgrounds from Philosophy to Computer Science to Medicine so we all bring something different to the table which makes for great discussions. I enjoy the feeling of finding something new or unexpected in my research, and this is made better by sharing the findings with my supervisor or labmates, who often bring different perspectives I hadn’t considered.

What do you most value about your MRC-DTP Studentship?

I have enjoyed several symposia for MRC students in Cambridge and across the UK. These have been beneficial to see the different kinds of research that MRC students do across many different fields.

Have you had any internships or high-level training and if so, can you describe their benefits to you?

I have completed some training in machine learning and high-performance cluster computing with the University, which helped improve my computational skills for an internship with the Alan Turing Institute. These are skills I very much wanted to develop during my PhD, and will be valuable in my PhD work and my career beyond.