How does a being a part-time PhD researcher actually work in daily life? This is a
question I gave some considerable thought to before I started my doctorate in
January, as I wanted to be sure I could make the commitment to research whilst
working in a job that often means long hours for weeks at a time. Now the
reality is becoming apparent and the past six weeks have gone some way to
answering this question more fully than previously, as the practicalities of keeping research momentum
when the day job gets busy have had to be addressed (see my work here).
As I've mentioned on this blog previously one of my specialities
is creating 3D animations of drug mechanisms of action; these tend to be
commissioned during the middle–later stages of a drug's development
to show the target audience how the drug works at a molecular level. This
involves modelling lots of proteins, cells, viri, bacteria, DNA, RNA etc, often
referring to published data of the structures themselves for accuracy. The
animations are mainly educational in nature (being targeted at consultants and doctors) and are based on some quite
remarkable cutting edge science and I love working on them. They are also
extremely labour intensive and time-consuming.
So recently I've been in full animation production mode and research has
had to be put on the back-burner. Well, almost. Gaps in the production process (which occur for any number of reasons i.e. awaiting assets, team and client review, rendering) for the MOA are little windows of opportunity to keep things moving, even in a
small way. I had photographed most of the vertebral column and some dermal
armour elements of the Polacanthus
specimen I'm working on for processing into 3D data. If a machine is not
rendering a sequence of animation, it can be crunching through these data and
making lovely 3D models of dinosaur bones. Despite being a basic set up, the
results so far have been encouraging; I'm getting good quality, detailed meshes
of the specimen.
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| My photogrammetry setup. A tad bottom end to be sure, but it's delivering good results. |
Periods of reduced work activity also give me time to get on with other small but
essential tasks such as reading and annotating papers, reviews, planning next
steps and keeping up with developments in the field. I use this time to get to
grips with new subjects such as looking at methods of statistical analysis,
bones need measuring and drawing, meetings have to be booked, talks prepared
amongst the myriad of other tasks that need attending to keep the whole process
moving forward.
Animation showing the mesh obtained from the photogrammetry setup shown above.
All this can be done without the slightest disruption to my work
as an artist and graphic designer. Although there are periods where I work long
hours for many consecutive days (running into weeks on large projects) and can't get any research done at all
generally I can take tortoise-like, small steps towards the mountain on a daily
basis.
It's a marathon and not a sprint for sure.
