Events
Who are the faces behind a PhD
The Faculty of Medicine recently received the visit of the Minister of Sciences, Technology and Higher Education, Manuel Heitor, who opened the 13th edition of the Annual CAML PhD Students' Meeting.
In a brief contact with the organisation, always controlled by the students working on their PhDs, I met Filipe Cortes Figueiredo. Communicative, spontaneous and not less formal when the topic so demands, I asked him to provide a balance of two days of this renowned Meeting that not only gathers important personalities of Science and Healthcare in Portugal, many of them working at CAML, but also serves as showroom for some of the best Science in the world.
Speaking to some of the elements of this organising committee is the best way to assess the quality of the PhD Programme bearing our brand.
Organised and as agile as methodical, Filipe accepted the invitation and brought with him another of the team's strong elements, Eunice. A physician who also wants to be a scientist and a scientist who wants to continue to challenge medicine's knowledge could not make a more enriching duo and an excellent sample of the people integrating the PhD.
Filipe Cortes Figueiredo completed his MIM at the Faculty of Medicine. He finished his Medicine course in June and, in October 2015 he integrated the PhD on Immunometabolism and mitochondrial DNA sequencing in patients with Multiple Sclerosis at the same Faculty. Now finishing his 4th year of the PhD, under the guidance of Doctor Vanessa Morais, from iMM, he has the advantage of a good knowledge of the translational perspective, where both medicine and research complement each other to become stronger.
Constantly involved in great academic events, Filipe has always participated in projects that required him to change, to add value. He integrated the 4th team of the AIMS Meeting, the Student Association and the Pedagogical Board.
Eunice Paisana completed her degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Nova and completed her internship at iMM, where she developed her knowledge in Rheumatoid Arthritis.
It was not the internships among the group of Professor João Eurico that made Eunice and Filipe cross paths, as they would strengthen their bonds at the Organisation Committee for the PhD Student's Meeting of 2019 and through common friends in the scientific world, which turns out to be small. But let's conclude our description of Eunice.
She realised she would like to follow the path of Oncology and Immunology and went to Nottingham to study Cancer Immunology. Only after that did she decide to apply for the PhD Programme of LisbonBioMed, where she is now. She is currently on her 3rd year of the PhD with a project on cerebral metastasis with Doctor Cláudia Faria. The possibility of this connection that is as translational as Filipe's allows Eunice to access samples collected at the Santa Maria Hospital operating theatre and investigate them at iMM, meeting a wide range of people from the Faculty.
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Eleven people integrated the Organisation Committee for the PhD Meeting (Aparajita Lahree, Bernardo Costa Neves, Eunice Paisana, Filipa Oliveira, Filipe Cortes Figueiredo, Henrique Machado, João Sabino, Marcelo Dias, Marco Cavaco, Raquel Azevedo and Susana Dias. Despite the transversality of roles and not liking individual protagonism, Filipe and Eunice took the responsibility over the event's Communication brief with great dexterity, working as communication bridges between the 3 Institutions of CAML (Faculty, iMM and Hospital) and talking to the institutions to facilitate the necessary means to make the cogs turn. The Annual Meeting takes place for the 13th time, organised by the will of the PhD students who, year after year, help develop the prestige and interest of these sessions that go above and beyond.
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Can you highlight the main pillars that explain the importance of this event?
Filipe Figueiredo: The main point is to make it a space where the PhD students can present their projects as they currently are. This is done without an excessive formalism and provides them feedback from the Institution to readjust themselves in their work. This is very dynamic and very fluid, being the main point of the Meeting
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And people enjoy presenting their work during this “state of affairs”?
Eunice Paisana: I'd say they do. They see these Meeting days as part of the PhD they are completing. These days are very helpful for organising our work and discussing, with a diverse community from several scientific areas, the various paths that can be followed. It so happens that we have someone looking at our project in a way that we, until then, had not seen or considered.
Filipe Figueiredo: The CAML has a translational approach to medicine and this type of meeting enables this perspective, as it gathers physicians, researchers and other (research technicians which can provide a very rich feedback. In my case, one of the people showing greater interest during my presentation is a PhD researcher working with malaria.
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This means that it is possible to establish new bridges that become common to your future, is that it?
Filipe Figueiredo: Precisely that. And maybe no one could imagine that there would be connection points among us. I can even say that this is the main point, to create these common aspects with other people.
Eunice Paisana: The diversity present at the Meeting enables very positive discussions.
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What makes you choose a certain variety of speakers that are the faces of the program in a given year, as opposed to others?
Eunice Paisana: We try to choose different areas within this variety of guest speakers, and we always try to have a more clinical session, for which we invite Professor Fátima Carneiro, and then we have a session dedicated to basic biology. This year, we committed to cellular biology, with Doctor Marino Zerial. Afterwards, we had a more "out of the box" session with Professor Miguel Nicolelis, who spoke about Neuroscience and Regeneration.
Filipe Figueiredo: He is very good. He spoke about the possibility of spinal cord regeneration after intensive treatment with exoskeletons and how we can make paraplegic people walk again. He coordinated "The walk again project" and managed to get a paraplegic man to take the inaugural kick of the FIFA World Cup in 2014. He is a very inspiring person.
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What does a guest speaker feel when participating at a PhD Programme in Portugal?
Eunice Paisana: From my contact with the Professor, I understand that he enjoys speaking to students, enjoys spreading his message and his vision of what it is to be part of Science. Furthermore, he thinks that we are losing the fun of research for the search of something new and for the discovery, since our concern is more and more focused on what we can publish. He is an old school scientist.
Filipe Figueiredo: And they all behave with this level of commitment. Professor Fátima Carneiro had a very difficult schedule to manage, but upon receiving the invitation, she immediately said that she "would do everything for the students". Most of the speakers come because they will be speaking to students. They do not receive monetary compensation, they have amazing curricula and a full schedule, but they will do the utmost possible to participate.
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On the PhD Programme's opening day, Professor Carmo mentioned that there are still very few medical PhDs. But looking at the statistical data, we see that they're not so few anymore and that in a universe of 218, 60 are physicians. Still, what is the current reason for having much less physicians completing a PhD?
Filipe Figueiredo: I'm not shocked that physicians are not the majority in this panorama, as it is very important to have diversity. But it is true that not many physicians have PhDs in Portugal and that is very atypical if we consider other European countries like the United Kingdom, Denmark or Germany. It is also important to mention that the PhD structure for medical students of PhD programmes does not allow them to participate in the Meeting due to scheduling issues, and not because it is uninteresting for them. Many of these physicians take their PhD while working and it is very difficult to balance everything. Occupational safety is very scant and many times not fulfilled. I know plenty of physicians who would've liked to attend and were not among the audience because their schedule didn't allow it. It is, however, important to mention that some were able to attend!
Eunice Paisana: Still, we continue to appeal for a greater collaboration from the supervisors. It is important that they encourage their physicians to participate in the event, but this protection, this culture, is still non-existent.
Filipe Figueiredo: To try and involve these communities, we sent an invitation to the medical internship board and the intern committee of CHULN. But due to scheduling issues, their presence was not possible. In spite of this, the effort of this constant integration will continue to call more people, even if they are not completing PhDs but only wish to attend the seminars. The event is open to everyone who has an interest in Science.
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How can we better communicate this event so that its network increases further? What can you do to improve it?
Eunice Paisana: There's still a lot of room for improvement. It lacks a greater interaction between the institutions included in CAML. The Hospital, FMUL and the iMM should collaborate more between them to mobilise the community, to reach more students. I believe that the communication among them is not flowing perfectly, it is very stagnant between segments.
Filipe Figueiredo: This meeting has been taking place for 13 years, and having been at the Hospital as a 6th year student, completing research now at iMM and having been a medicine student at FMUL, I feel there's a great distance that starts at the parking lot separating the Hospital from the Egas Moniz Building. This marks a distance that is felt beyond the parking lots, between the Institutions. The CAML itself, which exists in decree-law since 2009, still needs to narrow this space between pillars.
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A new Committee is starting their work, what points would you highlight as deserving of further development?
Eunice Paisana: The first thing to highlight is the assessment topic, as we understand that the current assessment method (composed of Group Leaders and Post-Doc from iMM, and an assessment system that goes from 0 to 5) does not allow for a direct comparison between the students assessed in different sessions. We therefore suggest that the board of the iMM creates yearly PhD assessment committees to standardise the assessment, considering that, in the case of a tie, this committee would be in charge of solving it. It seems this could be a fairer solution.
Filipe Figueiredo: The second point is a greater integration and involvement from the CAML, which has a lot of space for improvement, mainly the involvement of the Hospital Centre, as we previously explained.
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Filipe, you said you wanted to be a medical researcher. Is it possible in this country or, as Prof. Rui Victorino said, are they a species on the brink of extinction?
Filipe Figueiredo: It's hard. And I hope to contribute to keeping this species alive, but we're lacking occupational safety, and then research falls to the background. But even if I have to do it after work, I will not let go of research.
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Time also puts deadlines on people. For now, Eunice waits for another year and a half of PhD and will continue here, hoping to do a post-doc at iMM afterwards. She knows that, one way or another, aiming at one field or another, she will always pursue scientific research.
Filipe, on the other hand, will return to medical practice in 2020, wishing to integrate the specialisation at a later date. He knows he wants to follow medical areas, and maybe Neurology is the most interesting to him, but he does not close doors and accepts diverse paths as opportunities for passions to work upon. In spite of that, he knows that after completing the specialisation, he will return to the reality of research, maybe integrating a medical post-doc.
After fulfilling the mission of constituting the organisational committee and rolling up their sleeves to complete their work, they now leave a legacy and feedback to those who follow and those who stay.
I'd say we'll continue to see them and know that they'll be causing an impact in everything they decide to do. We certainly hope so!
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Joana Sousa
Editorial Team