TechSpeak_podcast

Loads of things. Some of the team do experiments on materials to see how they perform in certain environments, others are at university learning about biochemistry or physics. Some of us do experiments outside of work. One of us is currently testing the urban myth that if you stop washing your hair it eventually washes itself. So far, we're not convinced that hypthesis is true!

That's something we've never managed to do long term. We do the podcast because we're so interested in so many things. When there's something we need to focus on we generally find that it helps to give yourself plenty of time to work on it and to not put yourself under too much pressure. It probably helps to have a space dedicated to work and setting milestones - something every PhD graduate in our group has had to learn!

Biotech seems like a degree that could take you in to loads of different fields so you'd probably find it really easy to move into something new. You could keep on moving on to something different every few years if you wanted to. Check out Laura's bio - thats exactly what she did.

Does being women in a male-dominated field bring about more cohesion/camaraderie with your women coworkers?

Some of us have been the only woman in a team so there couldn't be any cohesion! Others have found that we’re so focussed on the technical stuff that gender hasn’t been important. So for us and our experiences, we’d have to say no!

Do you have any anecdotal stories on your experiences/perspectives as women improving things at work?

One of us has worked with some fantastic women who have put a lot of effort into improving the social life in the lab by organising events and making sure everyone can get there. We can think of one person who's job is to support people who are visiting the lab where they work and they always go the extra mile to make sure the visitor has everything they need.

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How did you go about starting your podcast?

Two members of our team recorded an episode for The University of Manchester's faculty of Science and Engineering podcast and really enjoyed it so they got talking to a group of friends and threw some ideas around. We kinda settled on the format of having a conversation between a small group of people as we were in lockdown and missed those interesting conversations you get in the lab or at a conference. Sometimes we struggle to come up with topics that enough of us could talk about with confidence but generally, there are so many of us that we can always think of something. The podcast has grown organically as other people have contacted us and then ended up joining the team.

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Thanks for some great questions!

This AmA is a celebration for 1 year of podcasting for us, after a challenging few years for everyone we are really happy we have continued to do this podcast in our spare time, and we have enjoyed the conversations thus far! So we wanted to see if anyone had any questions. Our podcast is special as it is special for us, and we truly enjoy conversing and talking about science in any way our minds go to.

Podcasting is now a very large space, and although you don't have to agree, we're quite proud of what we do and how we contribute to the space. We hope you can get the chance to listen and give us feedback to what you think we could be missing, we're open to constructive criticism.

For some of us, it was because we kept coming across things that took a lot of effort to understand, almost as if they were explained in a way that just didn't resonate with us. For all of us, its mostly because were big geeks and like talking about science.

The robot arm has a long way to go before it can play chess. Right now its still learning to identify the different chess pieces!