In March, at the Helmholtz Pioneer Campus Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Seminar, I was honoured with being the first person to present, not only in this seminar, but since the opening of our building. Within this talk, I informed attendees on the amazing work that the Doctoral INItiative (DINI) does on campus and in Germany to improve the wellbeing and working conditions of Doctoral Researchers at the center. In the current post, I want to take this chance to explain my motivation to join DINI, the responsibilities I hold within DINI and my hopes for its future.
As a Doctoral Researcher myself, I am passionate to improve the understanding of psychiatric disorders, thereby personalising treatment and opportunities for healing for patients. Within this context, I work on uncovering the genetic architecture of psychiatric disorder through polygenic models and epistasis-detecting methods.
The fundamental nature of this specific research left me with a drive to apply my knowledge on psychiatric disorders and mental health directly. What better place to do this than helping my fellow Doctoral Researchers.
The 2022 Mental Health Month organised by DINI included a number emails shared to improve awareness of Mental Health issues among Doctoral Researchers. Inspired by their care for this topic I decided to join one of their meetings, hoping to add to their knowledge base and help out with future wellbeing-related topics. I’ve been a part of DINI ever since.
What started off as a way to help out with Mental Health related matters turned into an experience that truly enriched my time as a Doctoral Researcher at Helmholtz Munich. The DINI team took me in, we made friends and I was able to help on a variety of responsibilities within DINI. Eventually even structuring the individual responsibilities into a clear structure reminiscent of comittees.
I have been responsible for posting and interacting with the LinkedIn page since the first times I joined DINI. Creating posts and sharing announcements of the monthly social events and other important notices.
Once I got a bit more familiar with DINI, I was also able to take on responsibilities in organising some of these social gatherings such as a bookclub, a boardgame night and a wintersports trip to the mountains.
Then, targeting my specific passion for Mental Health advocacy, I took on the responsibility of improving the previously sent out emails on Mental Health Awareness, including new resources available to students and emphasizing compassion.
During our yearly DINI retreat, which I was involved in organising as well, we discussed the current structures of DINI, our focus for the upcoming year. And as many of us are leaving within this upcoming year we discussed ways to improve our outreach and recruitment as well. Here I setup the Quarterly Newsletter that we would send around to all Doctoral Researchers. The Newsletter includes announcements of upcoming events, informs on wellbeing, career-services and any other topics relevant for our Doctoral Researchers.
The end of a chapter
Overall, I am proud of all my achievements within DINI and I really learned a lot on the organisation and importance of Doctoral Researcher Representation. I’ve decided to focus on finalising my studies after the third quarterly Newsletter. And this decision comes with conflicting emotions. I am proud and happy to have been able to be a part of DINI, learn so much about events, student representation and the German systems. But I am also sad to leave behind such wonderful friends. Luckily, we were able to recruit new members who have a promising amount of drive to help DINI into the future and keep improving Doctoral Researchers conditions at our center.
Thanks to all of DINI for making my time as a Doctoral Researcher so much more meaningful.
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