It is with great pleasure that I submitted the report for my 2018 Leslie (Les) J. Fleming Churchill Fellowship Report, detailing the fantastic experience of undertaking a research sabbatical in Dr Daniel Heller's lab at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Centre in New York.
It was impressive to see that, in the area of near-infrared spectroscopy and imaging, Dan's group really started from the ground up, partnering with Photon Etc to engineer a range of new instruments over a number of years, in order to push the boundaries of knowledge in this area. This has resulted in a number of new systems for Photon and its customer base in the research and life science arena, and has pushed the Heller group into the front of the pack in terms of research groups in this area.
I was also really interested to see how the MSKCC and MSK institute recruits and trains its students; typically the PhD students had undertaken several unique summer projects, and for each new project the "soft skills" of research (e.g. time/self management, knowing when "urgency" is required, academic writing and presentations, etc) were reinforced. In this way, when these students start their PhDs, I think they have advantages over many others. But there's no reason as to why this cannot be achieved in other institutions! The other difference is that the "tri-institutional" PhD scheme (linking MSK to local universities) has been running for a couple of decades, so it is well known to the students involved.
The report is freely available at the Fellowship porta via this link