During this time of upheaval we have decided to send the newsletter out on a more regular basis.
The Leeds Doctoral College Newsletter is emailed to all postgraduate researchers (PGRs) and members of the Doctoral College, and is published as an announcement on the Leeds Doctoral College Organisation on Minerva( https://minerva.leeds.ac.uk/ ) and students.ac.uk( https://students.leeds.ac.uk/info/10112/research_degrees/1103/doctoral_college_newsletters ) Past editions can be requested via email.

UPDATES

For the latest general advice, please check the latest news on our dedicated coronavirus website and PGR FAQs( https://coronavirus.leeds.ac.uk/student-advice/postgraduate-researcher-faqs/ ). There is also an archive of the coronavirus updates sent to students: https://coronavirus.leeds.ac.uk/student-advice/student-communications/ .

We’re delighted to announce that Prof. Luke Windsor( https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/music/staff/527/professor-w-luke-windsor ) will become the new Dean of the Doctoral College when Prof. Claire Honess’s term ends this summer. Prof. Windsor is currently the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Culture and will start as Dean from 1st Sept 2020. Claire welcomed Luke on Twitter “I'm delighted that Luke has been announced as the next Dean of the Leeds Doctoral College. It has been a huge joy and privilege to serve our PGR community in this role for 5 years, and I know that Luke will take the Doctoral College from strength to strength.”

Union Update Simon Sandison is stepping down as LUU Postgraduate Engagement Manager and is moving on to a new post within the University. Simon has worked incredibly hard to improve the connections and support for PGRs in LUU, fighting for your interests whilst also being a lovely colleague and we wish him all the best! A new manager will be appointed soon and if you have any issues to raise with LUU in the meantime, please contact Abiha Khan( https://www.luu.org.uk/exec/abiha-khan/ ). An emergency PGR Reps Forum will take place this week to give PGR reps the opportunity to discuss the impact of the coronavirus situation with the Doctoral College and LUU.

Please keep in touch with your supervisor/s and continue to maintain your GRAD record. We are asking PGRs whose work is affected by the current circumstances in any way (e.g. lack of access to facilities, inability to carry out fieldwork, caring duties, etc.) to document this in a ‘supervision meeting’ record on GRAD so that your supervisors are aware and so that we can take this into account should we need to in future. If your circumstances change in any way, or you have any concerns, please contact your Graduate School( http://www.leeds.ac.uk/info/130206/applying/124/graduate_school_contacts ) – all teams are working from home but still available on emails.

Please do get in touch with the Doctoral College( doctoralcollege@leeds.ac.uk ) if there is anything more that you need to know.

Your safety and wellbeing are our priority.

DOCTORAL COLLEGE GOOD NEWS

We want to celebrate your successes, big or small. Please send any good news to Doctoral College( doctoralcollege@leeds.ac.uk ).

32 online vivas have now taken place since we started to move to online examinations. Thanks and well done to the examiners and, especially, the candidates who have pioneered this new process. Congratulations, in particular, to the PGRs who’ve passed their vivas this week! As if a world-wide pandemic wasn’t stressful enough…

UPCOMING EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Research Nights Sadly we are not able to run our usual Research Nights, but we didn’t want it to stop. So in lieu of regular Research Nights taking place in Pyramid in LUU, we would like to invite you to join us for the monthly #ResearchNightsIn coming soon to Twitter, showcasing some of the fascinating research being conducted by you!

If you would like to take part by creating a short video to explain your research or a fun fact from your area, just email doctoralcollege@leeds.ac.uk to express your interest. It’s a great opportunity to test the waters and develop skills in online engagement.

WELLBEING AND COMMUNITY

LUU Wellbeing update The Student Union building has closed, but the team are working hard to continue to provide support to all students. You can see updates and access their resources on the dedicated LUU Coronavirus site and starting this weekend, there will be a series of online events especially for postgraduate students.

The student exec have also set up the 'LUU Covid-19 Community' group on Facebook - a group for the students of Leeds to come together during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s an excellent mix of supportive resources and pet photos.

Your Student Reps are also here to help with any concerns.

Staying connected Whether you are still in Leeds or have returned home, there are plenty of opportunities to stay connected to our University community( https://www.facebook.com/groups/leedsstudentcommunitygroup ). The International Office have compiled a directory of online activities, classes, groups and other interesting or useful links across the uni. Well worth a look for everyone, not just international students.

Ramadan Kareem Many of you will begin fasting this week as you observe the month of Ramadan( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramadan ). As you enter into this period of reflection and spiritual renewal, we hope everyone stays healthy, safe and united, despite the current challenges we face. Please stay in touch with the university and let your Graduate School know if we can assist with anything. Our sincere good wishes to you and yours.

Student Counselling & Wellbeing Service - Coronavirus (Covid-19) Update SCW@LUU same day support will reopen from Monday 30th March 2020. This service will now be offered through remote online support by telephone, email and /or by Zoom.
To speak with a member of the team regarding your mental health and wellbeing, please contact: scw@leeds.ac.uk The team will be available to respond to any emails received between 10am -12pm and 1pm – 4pm Monday to Friday. Other sources of support are linked on the Counselling website: https://students.leeds.ac.uk/info/100001/counselling_and_wellbeing/957/counselling_wellbeing_and_mental_health_support .

RESEARCH SKILLS AND CAREERS

OD&PL’s top three courses this week This week we are focusing on mindfulness and remote working. We know working from home doesn’t come without its challenges at the moment and it can be very easy to blur the boundaries of work and home life. So this week’s courses aim to support you with improving your productivity (through optimising Outlook online), managing your time and integrating mindfulness practices into your working day. Links to the course and more info on the OD&PL blog: https://leedsodpl.wordpress.com/2020/04/17/remote-working-and-mindfulness-with-linkedin-learning/ .

Library Research Support Team The Library Research Support Team are still here to support PGRs and the best way to contact them is to email research@library.leeds.ac.uk. For more information about how the team can support you please click here( https://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/1600/about/149/meet_the_teams/2 ). The team are now running all their workshops as online webinars, for more information about the workshops and to book on please click here( https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/university-library-10641701089 ).

A new "Shut Up and Write! For Postgraduates and Staff" webinar session is now available to book via Eventbrite : Monday 27th of April 13.00-15.50 "Shut up and Write!" sessions provide a quiet, supportive space to focus on writing, incorporating regular breaks. Please note this is not a conventional webinar workshop - we do not provide training on how to improve your writing. The sessions are open to all postgraduates, post-docs and research staff. Book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/shut-up-and-write-for-postgraduates-and-staff-webinar-tickets-102094210532 .

Last chance to win with LinkedIn Learning! Every time you watch a video on LinkedIn Learning between 23 March and 24 April 2020, you’ll be entered into a prize draw to win £100 Love2Shop vouchers, with Easter Egg runner-up prizes. Every time you watch a video, you'll get one entry into the prize draw - the more you watch, the better your chances of winning! (Prizes will be dispatched once the University returns to normal working after the Corona virus outbreak. If you have never used LinkedIn Learning before have a look at the quick start guide: https://it.leeds.ac.uk/it?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0013613 .

HELP WANTED Hackathon Project: understanding and treatment of COVID-19 Euan McDonnell, a 2nd year Bionformatics PhD student working on dysregulation of non-coding RNA networks during viral infection, has started up a hackathon project (hackseqRNA https://www.hackseq.com/), that aims to help with increasing the understanding of COVID-19. One objective is to find genes shown to be dysregulated during SARS-CoV-2 infection and our plan is to work this out from published articles. As this is such a large task, Euan would like to use the collective wisdom of our researchers by asking, when reading papers on COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 that show evidence of dysregulation of genes/gene sets during infection, to enter as much information into the first table of the Google Docs spreadsheet as possible (link below). Moreover, if you find papers where any gene expression data (NGS/Nanopore RNA-seq, ChIP-Seq, Proteomics etc) is generated/used, recording this (inc the data accession codes, along the lines of GSEXXXXX or E-GEOD-XXXX) and adding these to the table below would be hugely helpful too. If you fancied joining the team we're looking for people with experience of data wrangling & quality-control of 'omics data, pathway analysis/network modelling and module detection. Anyone who contributes as part of the team or by sending data/info dysregulated genes from papers would of course be given credit.

If you have any queries please contact Euan (bs14e3m@leeds.ac.uk) and Google docs spreadsheet( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h1U1ZpH_avjuDrjsJNmN4xlD7OyEkJBMKSYWUmNSh-s/edit?fbclid=IwAR3O7Jx5fZbni_3Ib-enGLN25at-rdlYM4vrpsv1gGUvYNYkSN__Q4ebtkA#gid=0 ).

Doing Good Leeds Voluntary Action Leeds are co-ordinating the city-wide volunteering effort to respond to the Coronavirus situation, and all of the activity and resources are listed on the Doing Good Leeds site. If you are healthy and low-risk, you can register as a Community Care Volunteer( https://doinggoodleeds.org.uk/covid-19-care-volunteering.html ) and help in your community; they are particularly seeking volunteers with DBS checks in place. If you need assistance they also have a directory of organisations( https://data.val.org.uk/organisation-directory ) offering support.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter( https://twitter.com/LeedsDocCollege ) and Facebook( https://www.facebook.com/LeedsDoctoralCollege/ ) and watch out for announcements on Minerva( https://minerva.leeds.ac.uk/ ) to keep up with future developments and events!