Manuel Grima goes Paris – Secondment experience

The possibility of doing secondments in partner labs and collaborate with other members of the network is probably what Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) we appreciate the most of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Innovative Training Network (ITN) fellowships. Thus, we are glad to inform that, with the new year 2019, time for networking has finally started for META-CAN.
As an ESR13 working in Jean-Ehrland Ricci’s team at C3M (INSERM, Nice) I had the opportunity to complete my first six weeks of secondments during February and March of this year. My destination was the lab of our META-CAN partner Véronique Baud at Université Paris Descartes, where my colleague Leonardo Lordello (ESR14) is working and with whom I could exchange the knowledge and skills we acquired during our first year of PhD. For some weeks I changed the sun of the French Riviera for one of the most important European capitals. It is always enriching to know a new city, its people and its culture, but living in Paris has definitively been one of the better experiences I have ever had.
During this time, I have learnt how to do research in a new lab with a new environment. I had the opportunity to meet new researchers with different backgrounds and learn from their expertise different points of view and new techniques. Because I truly believe in collaborative network as the path towards good research, I found this training a crucial step for ESR formation, allowing us to leave our comfort zone, open our minds to new ideas and put into perspective our own projects. Undoubtedly, having these networking opportunities during our PhD will make us better researchers in the future.
Finally, I would like to thank all the members of Véronique Baud’s lab for the warm reception they gave me, with special mention to Leonardo Lordello: thank you for your help and I hope we will continue sharing our experiences in the future. And, of course, I wish the best to the rest of my ESR colleagues in their secondments and I hope they will enjoy it as I did.