Introducing a new blog series – just five answers to five quick questions! Thinking about doing a PhD? Find out more about what it’s like as a PhD Student at JIC. Already a PhD? Learn more about what your peers are doing.
Today we have final year student Sreya Ghosh talking about her PhD experience!
1. Who are you? 
My name is Sreya, and I am currently a final year PhD student. I did my Bachelor degree in India in Engineering, with a major in Biotechnology. During my undergraduate degree, I really enjoyed my plant biotechnology classes and started doing internships in plant sciences wherever I could. My degree itself was very applied in nature – most of my coursework was regarding production systems for various biotechnology products, and the related IP regulations and standards. During my internships, I met with people from agriculture or plant sciences background and it was an interesting experience for me to speak to people who would spend years trying to understand a molecule. I was fascinated by their grit and intelligence and the more I spoke to them, the more I was motivated to pursue a PhD. After my degree, I started an internship in Brande Wulff’s group to learn more about wheat research. I was sold on the projects that were being carried out in the group and started my PhD in the Wulff lab on a fellowship from 2016.
2. What is your PhD about?
My PhD is about developing technologies for rapid identification and characterisation of resistance genes in wheat. Wheat is a difficult crop to do research in – it has a big genome that is about 5 times the size of the human genome, and at the same time it takes a long time to get from seed to seed in wheat unlike many other short-lived crops or plants. This makes the development of computational tools to analyse the wheat genomes a challenging task, and often a wheat researcher has to wait for eons to take their seeds forward from their crosses. My group is one of a few groups out there that use a combination of wet and dry lab work to make this process faster. We develop chemical “fishing nets” to capture from the wheat DNA only the very essential information we need to read and analyse, and we trick the plants with strong lights and high temperature to flower faster to get seeds faster. Both these approaches and others have lowered the barriers to scientists being more willing to work on wheat directly instead of working on related plant species that are more amenable to traditional molecular and computational technologies. I work across these technologies – helping develop some, and using some others to answer questions about the nature of a disease called leaf rust in wheat and how we can develop genetic resistance to this disease.
3. What is your favourite PhD moment so far?
My favourite PhD moment is going to conferences and meeting people. Wheat is a widely grown crop so a lot of people from diverse backgrounds work on wheat, and it is fascinating to speak to them and learn about their culture’s perception of wheat and agriculture. It’s also very nice to travel to a lot of exotic locations and enjoy the extra day or two of tourism at the conference venues!
4. What do you do to switch off from PhD?
A PhD is quite stressful so I often try to switch off at least one day in the week when I bake or cook something new, or do a bit of craft. I like to spend my time upcycling small things in the house to make useful items – like sewing up vegetable bags from the tote bags I get at conferences or making a small cosy rug by plaiting strips of an old bedsheet!
5. What advice would you give a new PhD student?
A PhD is 4 years of your life and it is not easy. There will be many frustrating moments when nothing works and it may even feel like a stupid decision when you compare yourself to friends in high-paying white collar jobs, so make sure you are motivated to do your project for the entire 4 years. Think of why this question and this project matters to you, and how you would feel if you could see it answered. Remind yourself of this when you feel down. It’s also important in your PhD to focus on learning as much as you can – so spend some weeks early on in your PhD understanding what kind of learner you are (whether you learn best by reading and reflecting or just diving straight into the work) and structure your time accordingly. All of these things are easy if you have a good, understanding supervisor and mentor – so make sure you choose a project with someone who cares about your well-being as much as you do. More importantly, remember to have lots of fun – learning and making mistakes!
PhD Profile was concocted by Shannon Woodhouse. If you would like to be featured on PhD Profile, please email or find Shannon on Twitter @shwoodhouse.