Graduates of the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences go on to do amazing things.
Sahr Mian graduated from our MSc Plant and Fungal Taxonomy, Diversity and Conservation programme in 2019 and is now working as a Research Assistant at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Here, she shares her experience of studying at the School and how she arrived at a career in plant genomics.
“We had a really tight knit community on my course and I’m still close with many of them a year on. You rely on each other a lot in the MSc and there were lots of opportunities to make friends through group projects.
There are a huge range of taught modules at the beginning of the course, so you learn a bit of everything. When you do want to find a career this breadth of knowledge is very useful and when you start your six-month research project you really learn to hone in your skills and interests and that is where you find the drive for what you want to do as a career.
As I was already on Kew’s radar, it was really easy to be noticed and to provide the skills I had gained in a job.
I did my project in cytogenetics (genetics on a more chromosomal level). I found it so interesting and learnt some really niche and in demand skills, which really increased my employability. I was then recruited by Kew to help out on a project looking at chromosomal genetics and specifically was painting chromosomes. As I was already on Kew’s radar, it was really easy to be noticed and to provide the skills I had gained in a job.
Right now I’m still working at Kew on the Darwin tree of life project, a project that aims to sequence all the genomes of native UK species for the next two years. I find that I am using so much of my knowledge of my MSc in my day-to-day job. For example, the other day I was making a herbarium specimen and it took me back to the Madagascar field course where we were collecting plants, learning how to make these same herbarium specimens. It has been a really useful and enjoyable MSc and all the skills I have now have been built on from it. I’m learning new skills on the job and learning more every day.”