Moving On

The research group I work as part of gets most of it's funding from external sources; government grants or companies wanting R&D. This means that while the style of work stays fairly consistent the actual tasks can vary widely depending on which project I'm currently working on. Since I joined the group at the start of 2009 most of my time has been dedicated to the LarKC project. My recent trip to Vienna, however, marked the end of LarKC and the reviewers from the EU were highly impressed with all the work that has been achieved. The work package I was most involved with helped discover a new genetic mutation which we proved causes oral cancer, and they couldn't help but be impressed by that! Actually I'm pretty impressed by it as well. Finding a new cause for cancer wasn't something I ever imagined being involved with. We are currently in the process of writing up the finding for a journal article so I'm sure I'll tell you more about it when that work is done. LarKC has also allowed me to make good use of my passport with trips to Bled, Milan, Berlin, Lyon, Munich, Sofia, Innsbruck, Beijing, Lund (which I seem not to have blogged about at all), and of course Vienna. Of course, while I do get to briefly see the countries we visit I spend most of my time with the other people who worked on LarKC, and here we all are (well those of us who were at the final meeting in Vienna).

So now that LarKC has finished I'm moving on to work on another large EU funded project called Khresmoi. Khresmoi is about medical information analysis and retrieval and has been running for a year already. From discussions in Sheffield it looks like my work will be similar to stuff I'd been doing for LarKC. I'm sure I'll have a much better understanding in a weeks time as I'm attending a project meeting next week in Prague, so it doesn't look as if my passport will be getting a rest anytime soon!