I do like updating my blog but it is a real battle to decide how much of me to put out there (or here in this case). There are some great scientific and academic blogs out there, the serious ones and more and more those that allow us to laugh about the challenges we face as Research and Teaching staff. The endless conflict of time share between one and the other - and for me, and others the teaching of subjects that aren't within my research expertise. We can each write a blog that makes everything look shiny but there is another side. Imposter syndrome. The complex triangle of publishing, networking and funding. So many things that are systematically wrong yet appear impossible to fix. Teaching is hard and though we are trained to evaluate and give feedback our students are not. Yet student evaluation is embedded into our appraisal mechanism. This despite it being shown that students are more likely to give higher ratings to males or to the 'likeable/popular' teachers.
Lisa Chakrabarti and a small group of scientists are working on mitochondrial biology in the context of ageing, exercise, disease and other interesting areas. Here you will find some little updates, thoughts and profiles describing what we are up to.