Life update announcement

I actually sent this photo to mama janna who is still in hospital but having lots of scans and good people sorting her out :)

We have exciting news! Rory and I are moving to Lisbon, Portugal. TLDR: Rory has a PhD and I will do a research assistant job before starting my PhD there next year. The institute is called the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, which is very cool and futuristic. I will be in the Moita Lab and Ror in the Ribeiro lab.

Ok sorry that was still quite long. But honestly this process has been going on for months and I am so happy with the outcome!!

Finding PhDs in the same place, given that you specialize a lot is hard. So we applied together to ones in Munich, Lisbon and Zurich, and I applied to two more in Edinburgh and Paris. We really nailed it because apart from one rejection each (Paris for me and Zurich for Rory) we got offers from all of them! We discussed good Swiss salaries and maybe moving to Zurich with my job and finding something for Rory later, but we decided the city sounded quite boring and we are never going to be rich. Then we heard the Lisbon PhD program we had both applied to had been cancelled due to coronavirus as the building is shared with a cancer research institute. Ok, so at this point all bets were on Munich. Amazingly, both of us swam through the interviews and were both offered PhDs, in a city where we already love and live and have great friends. My topic would have been behaviours leading to speciation in tropical butterflies, but this would involve intensive tropical field trips to Ecuador and Colombia, they wouldn’t tell me how long it would be because fieldwork is unpredictable but “two extensive field seasons” were to be paid for. I discussed being able to return every six months with the supervisor but eventually decided, do I really want to be years in the isolated rainforest in a global pandemic? That’s adventurous even for me.

Lisbon had contacted us to let us know we had both been shortlisted for the interview process for doing a PhD but not through the usual route due to coronavirus, there was going to be a restricted intake of PhDs. Great! We were delighted. But this led to a funny situation where Rory and I were interviewed for the same job. There was no way this was going to work. We wrote a very awkward email explaining “you may have noticed an association between me and one of the other candidates, in fact we are a long term couple w passion for behaviour and evolution”. I was really against writing this email but it paid off! We had an email: can I call you tonight, 10pm? They were discussing a way to hire both of us with the director. Unfortunately it was going to be impossible for me to join the lab of my choice this year, but next year it would be possible and they could make a research assistant position for me for this year, where I could also collect data for if I decide to continue w PhD in the same lab.

Cue months of deliberation and uncertainty and delayed responses and are we making the right decision? Munich or Lisbon? But finally we are really excited and pleased with our decision. The research in Lisbon is doing a lot of very new high tech stuff using machine learning to study behaviour in fruit flies and work out how the brain works. We have never been to Portugal but everyone tells us it’s amazing. I hope you will all find an excuse to come visit (Jess and James I am pretty sure the windsurfing is good?! You will have to teach us!).

German word of the day miiiight have to change. *sighs and prepares to learn another European language to mediocrity*