Hug the Mountain

Genius.

And so it begins..

Above is my shiny new student card that I picked up earlier today so I guess this marks an 'official' start to my PhD here in Edinburgh.

It is not entirely certain yet what I'll be researching but it will be in the area of translational neuroimaging, looking at taking advanced MRI scans from the relatively easy environment of human brains into animal models of disease where a number of problems arise both from the nature of the subjects and also the physics involved when applied to subjects with dramatically different reduced sizes such as rodents (and spiders...). The project will be a good mix of physics challenges along with some interesting biological aspects and will hopefully give me some time to do more research with my spiders if not to find a way to use them within the PhD itself.

I'm quite excited as I've been wanting to do this for a long time. I'll be studying in a city I love to live in and within a department I have been in for almost five years already and feel very at home in. It won't always be easy but it'll be worthwhile and hopefully fun along the way.