Newsletter – December 2024

Iapetus students meeting in Stirling for the annual induction and development event, 2024

Welcome to the brand new Iapetus newsletter

A concern that has frequently been voiced about the Iapetus DTP is that, with so many organisations involved, it can be difficult to keep effective communications going. We have recently taken two steps to address that. The first is the Community Forum (see further, below). The second is the introduction of an occasional newsletter. We are keen that this should contain and reflect the content that would be most useful to you: students, supervisors, and potential supervisors. As a result, it would be great to hear from you about what you would like to see in the newsletter. If you have thoughts on what you need to read about, or suggestions for things you could contribute, do please let us know. For now, read on for the latest news and developments.

Doctoral Landscape Award success!

Perhaps our biggest news is that we can finally announce that Iapetus was successful in securing funding from the new Doctoral Landscape Award scheme. This should mean a further 5 cohorts of PhD students across the environmental sciences, with continued development of our training and cohort identity. This was quite a shake-up of the way that UKRI funds doctoral training, so we were thrilled to be successful. We’re enormously grateful to our students and supervisors, past and present, for having given us such a great platform on which to build! Massive thanks to all who helped to draft the proposal, contribute case studies, data and testimonials, or bring together the organisations to make sure that a coherent and agreed proposal went in by the deadline!

Stirling work

Our annual induction and development event took place in Stirling from 19-21 November. It was a great event, incredibly well organised by Heather Price, Iapetus academic lead for the University of Stirling. It featured a variety of training, from the fundamentals of machine learning to participatory research, and many things in between; a fun evening out at a local restaurant; a tremendous line-up of speakers show-casing potential post-PhD careers in other sectors; and even some marsh mallow and spaghetti construction. The venue was excellent and the catering impressive. We are particularly grateful to the non-academic speakers, including: Prof. Sallie Bailey (Natural England); Dr Lynsey Bunnefeld (Scottish Government); Dr Claire Neil (SEPA); Dr Ramy Salemdeeb (S&P Global); Dr Dave Walls (TownRock Energy); Dr Robin Whytock (Okala); and Prof. Jeremy Wilson (RSPB).

Part of the purpose of the event was to welcome our new cohort of students. They are now featured on the website, and you can check out the range of projects they are pursuing by following the link below.

The University of Stirling campus a frosty but beautiful setting for our event

The University of Stirling campus (top) was a frosty but beautiful setting for our event, where building was a strong focus: building knowledge, building links (across cohorts and across institutions), and building towers of quite variable integrity (bottom)!

New funding, new comms

A reminder for students that we now have a community forum. This is intended to serve as a means of easy communication, a repository for important information, a way to strengthen your network across the whole DTP, and an easy way to communicate with the DTP’s management. Please don’t forget to visit occasionally, especially as this is the way that we will make opportunities available (see the ‘opportunities’ space) – some of which might be time-limited.

Ultimately, we intend the new site to serve as a forum for the whole Iapetus community, including staff and alumni. However, for now, we are launching it just for students. Once we have a better feel for how it’s working and how we can ensure separate channels for staff, students and alumni, we hope to open it up.

We hope that the forum will provide an easy way for you to let us know about your successes (which, otherwise, can take a long time to reach us). So do use it to let everyone know about publications, thesis submission and vivas. Sam’s “Win Wednesday” shout-out is a good opening to convey that information!

On a related note, when you publish a paper, do please remember to acknowledge the grant (currently, for Iapetus2 students, that means acknowledging funding from NERC, NE/S007431/1). You can also trumpet your papers on social media – and feel free to tag in Iapetus (e.g., Blue sky: @iapetusdtp.bsky.social).

Meet the team

Occasionally, it takes a little while for new staff to find out who the Iapetus lead is for their institution. Here’s a reminder – and an opportune moment to note that, as those at UKCEH will know, Jill Thompson recently retired after many years’ service to Iapetus. We’re grateful to her for all her hard work – and grateful, too, to Maria Bogdanova for taking over the role!