Not two days are the same when you do a Ph.D in science. Daily tasks vary between performing experiments in the lab, analysing samples on various equipment, analysing results by the computer, writing reports, and preparing presentations for different meetings and seminars. Some days all my time is spent working on the computer by my desk, other days I spend several hours without break performing cell culture experiments.
07.40: Alarm clock goes off.
08.30: I actually get out of bed after repeated snoozing. One of the big advantages of a Ph.D is the flexible work hours and the ability to be the boss of your own time. I'm not good with early mornings so I rather start work later and stay later in the evening.
9.45: Arrive to the office, open the computer and check any important e-mails in the inbox. Review the notes I made yesterday and check that everything is under control for today's experiment. Double-check calculations, prepare all reagents and make sure the cells are healthy.
10.30: Blood sample arrives from the blood bank. Time to get started with the experiment! I want to isolate immune cells from the blood of a healthy donor to see how they react to the virus that I'm studying. Isolating the right cells can be done by centrifugation of the blood on a medium with a particular density. I work in a laminar flow hood to keep everything sterile and prevent bacterial growth in my cell cultures.
12.40: The immune cells have been isolated and treated with virus. Now I will leave the cells in an incubator for 48 hours before I analyse them. The incubator is necessary to keep the cells alive and maintains an environment similar to the human body - humid, 37 degrees Celcius, and 5% carbon dioxide.
12.45: Time for lunch. More often than not I have it at my desk while going through any new e-mails that have come during the morning.
13.00: Supervisor meeting. I'm furtunate enough to have a very accessible supervisor, but the graduate school requires us to keep a record of at least one official meeting a month. I present some of my most recent results and we discuss how to continue the work based on what has happened with my experiments. As I'm now in my final year, I feel like I can be much more part of the discussion and come with my own suggestions on how to shape the project, compared to when I started and mostly just followed my supervisor's instructions.
15.15: Quickly typing up notes from the meeting in the online meeting record before going back to the lab.
15.30: Time to harvest some cells from an experiment that I set up earlier in the week. These cells are cancer cells and I just want to see if my virus has killed them. We often use flow cytometry to measure cell death. The flow cytometer is a machine equipped with lasers that can measure the fluorescence of single cells in a sample. For this particular experiment, I use a fluorescent cell stain which penetrates dead and dying cells and stains them yellow.
16.20: Time to analyse the samples on the flow cytometer. The machine is connected to a computer which displays the results from each sample. This particular machine requires each sample to be entered into the machine manually, so I sit by the machine, put samples through and check that everything looks reasonable on the monitor. This is a simple experiment, so each sample takes less than a minute to run through.
17.10: After cleaning and shutting down the flow cytometer, I return to my desk to check the inbox again. I make a short list of things I have to remember to do tomorrow and make a plan for a new experiment that I will set up. I finish a few more Powerpoint slides for the presentation that I have to in next week's lab meeting.
18.15: Time to go home, tummy is rumbling and I'm glad I already have a dinner prepared in the fridge at home!