A Whole New Coding World

Hi everyone! My name is Helena, and I am a first year iCASE PhD student, currently enrolled in the LIDo programme and L2D course. My PhD project is a collaboration between 英国伦敦大学 - 伦敦国王学院 and the Diamond Light Source , which is the UK's synchrotron light source facility. The project will focus on understanding the effects of microplastics on mammalian cells, using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and microscopy, and I am really excited about starting!?

Anyway, a little? background information about myself: I attended the science branch of a German-French high school, struggled for multiple months in deciding what to study afterwards, and then enrolled in a German-French chemistry bachelors programme, in which I could combine my interest in science with my love for languages (at least, kind of). I considered switching to a more interdisciplinary Masters, but the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and sticking with chemistry seemed to be a more convenient choice. This ended up being the best possible decision, as I got to work on several diverse, fascinating and interdisciplinary projects in polymer chemistry, material science and analytical chemistry; while also working alongside some pretty amazing people!?

So, why LIDo? Well, simply put, I really wanted to conduct an interdisciplinary (essentially the 'I' in LIDo) project for my PhD - which is exactly what I am doing now. My project sits at the interface of polymer science, toxicology, environmental science, pharmacy, cell biology, analytical chemistry and maybe even a little physics (I might be pushing my luck on that one). Additionally, I was really drawn to the project by the industrial collaboration, and I couldn’t give up the chance to work with a Synchrotron light source. And getting to live in London is definitely a pretty amazing bonus (which I can totally say after living here for slightly over a month)!?

Having briefly described my background, I should probably talk about my programming experience, too. Well - as you probably expected - there isn't much to talk about, as I have no experience. None. Not even a tiny bit. My scientific and academic life has been entirely lab-based, and my coding experience is limited to opening my .csv files in Excel and changing the decimal separator there (which I always have to look up, by the way)!?

What does that mean for my expectations of the L2D course? Well, I certainly do not expect to be a master coder at the end of it. But I do hope that these L2D classes will help me understand what Python coding is useful for, and how I might be able to use it in my research. And I am quite curious to see how much (and how fast… or, rather, slow) a complete programming beginner can learn Python, using this course. Because, quite frankly, I am not even sure if the words coding and programming are interchangeable.??

P.S.: OK, I just googled, and they are not interchangeable. Apparently, coding is part of programming? Maybe don’t trust me on that one… I’ll try and figure it out as I go along!

Written by? Helena Friedrich , edited by the?Learn To Discover?Team.