A few days back I was coming back to Swansea after my summer holidays in Spain. As we all know, coming back to work after holidays is not always easy, but in my way to home from the airport, at one side of the road, I saw a phrase that changed my mood: “Science for a Better Life”. Now I didn’t even remember where I saw it, but as you may now it is the slogan of a big company in the healthcare sector. As I saw it in that moment the slogan has two meanings. On one hand it remind me of the importance of the work that we at AdMoRe (and researchers in general) are doing. In my case, the work I am doing will contribute to create new and better MRI scanners and, ultimate, to improve the healthcare for many people. But even if you are working in a different area, your research will contribute to improve the life of many people. For example, some of the AdMoRe fellows are working in collaboration with Wolkswagen and their research will contribute to create better cars (safer, less polluting,…). I think it is very important to always remember this, specially those times when we get lost in the smallest and more complicated details of our research. For me, it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to work in a field that might greatly improve the life of other people.
On the other hand the slogan had for me another meaning, which is the opportunity that science gave me to improve my own life. After a bachelor and a master’s degree, where I learned not only science but also critical thinking and many other transversal skills, I had the opportunity to enrol in this PhD, which gives me the opportunity to work abroad, travel, attend to international conferences, work with some of the biggest experts from both industry and academia and as I previously said, work on something that I like and that will impact the lives of other people. For all this, I would like to thank the support from the EU and all the partners of the AdMoRe project.
Curiously enough, our slogan at Siemens, “Ingenuity for Life” is not far from the one I saw, and I think it combines the two meanings I mentioned. As I see it, it encourages us to apply all our intelligence and learning to create a better life for ourselves and others.
So remember, if you ever get lost between complicated research details, and you get demotivated, try to remember the true meaning of your research.