I don't doubt the sector exists. What I was questioning was whether this is a good time to be getting into it. And whether you might learn more useful stuff on an internship than paying for a course.

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The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is one way of getting a feel for quality of research at institutions. It's not foolproof - universities can be quite strategic in what they submit so as to try to improve their score, but it does give yoau feel for who the big players are. The specific rankings you might be interested in are:

Cancer
http://www.rae.ac.uk/results/qualityProfile.aspx?id=2&type=uoa
Pre-clinical and Human Biological Sciences
http://www.rae.ac.uk/results/qualityProfile.aspx?id=15&type=uoa
Other Laboratory Based Clinical Subjects
http://www.rae.ac.uk/results/qualityProfile.aspx?id=5&type=uoa

Off the top of my head for the fields you mention I would look in London (UCL, Imperial College, Kings College, Institute of Cancer Research, QMUL), Cambridge, Newcastle, Bristol, Manchester, Oxford, Leeds, Birmingham Nottingham and Glasgow. They all seem to have decent RAE scores, plus are generally regarded as good universities (apologies to any I have missed out!) For biomedical research I personally think it's good to go to a uni that has a medical school whose staff are actively engaged in research, even if you ultimately end up working in a non-clinical group.

As well as the above, Cancer Research UK have a number of dedicated research facilities of their own, as well as funding research in universities: http://science.cancerresearchuk.org/research/centres/

Another suggestion would be to look at papers you're reading on work you find interesting and see where the research is coming from. Or look at the big conferences in those fields and see where the names relating to your areas of interest are from.

Good luck!

Your choice of adjectives suggests you'd really like to work with the first one!

Ignoring their universities, how are their respective departments viewed in your field? What are the publication records like for each of the potential supervisors? What's the current funding status of their work? I think funding tends to beget funding. I reckon if your potential supervisor has just been awarded a programme grant, your own application may be more successful than if s/he is approaching the end of a project grant and hasn't lined up the next thing, for example.

Oh magictime, I'm really sorry - that comment wasn't aimed at you at all. I was just having a general non-directional rant!

Comments like that are usually made to me after someone has made a blunder and they are trying to dig themselves out of a hole. It doesn't really help though.

I took a friend's younger sister to a science festival the other week. She's a sixth former, and quite tall and was dressed smartish. I am shorter than her and was on the scruffier end. The various exhibitors we chatted to didn't know how to place us and I think a lot of them took a punt and decided we were both first year undergrads!

I'm actually getting sick of people saying things like 'Oh, but you'll be so glad of it when you're 40'. Maybe I will, but for the moment I'm quite fed up with the mistaken perception that I'm significantly younger than I am. It's just embarrassing when you're trying to conduct yourself in an adult environment and people use unhelpful yardsticks by which to measure age.

That said, when I was doing my PhD my first white hairs started appearing. I blame the stress!

Dunno if this would help but maybe try searching the thing that you're trying to reference on Google Scholar or similar and see how other people have cited it?

I share your problem. I'm older than you and I still get mistaken for a teenager. If people think I'm an undergrad I feel like it's an improvement!

I would feel worried about teaching in schools (because the kids might not respect me) or if I were speaking at a conference ("Who does she think she is?!") but the scenario you describe causes me less anxiety. So long as you know your material and present it well I doubt your audience will react to how old they perceive you to be. You only need to be an authority figure in terms of knowledge, rather than behaviour management, and this should be evident in your presentation (and the fact that they are there to learn from you!)

The only advice I can give is to veer towards whatever clothes etc make you look older/more authoritative. The only time I did a lecture I wore a smart/casual skirt and shirt, even though I could have got away with t shirt and jeans, because the former made me look slightly closer to my real age and gave me the confidence to present myself as being in charge, if you see what I mean.

Good luck!

======= Date Modified 16 Jul 2009 09:55:44 =======
Alright, I'll put my helpful hat on.

1. Usefulness. I think this course may be of most use to a person who wants to work for a luxury brand. Is this what you want to do?

2. Might it be the case that the kind of insight/experience obtained by such a couse would be better acquired on the job?

3. If you're the sort of person who 'just likes studying' are you ever going to embrace the business world with sufficient enthusiasm to justify studying this particular topic?

4. There's a recession on. How do you think the luxury brand market is fairing at the mo? What would be your job prospects over the next few years be?

I think you should develop an algorithm that allocates projects to potential PhD students and test it to see the project completion rate.

And what would you like us to do about it?

Am I being thick or....

am I missing something?

Epi will be quite mathsy. You could probably minimise the number of stats units you do, but it depends on what your goals are the other side of the course as to how helpful this would be. Prior knowledge is probably less important than confidence with numbers and feeling happy about getting to grips with statistical concepts.

As an alternative, how about Public Health? A Public health MSc (or MPH) has a bit of a broarder overview, taking in epidemiology, health economics, policy issues etc. If you wanted to go down the Public Health trainee route, a masters degree would be incorporated into that. But I think you have to have some relevant experience (3 years worth?) before you can get accepted onto that scheme (http://www.publichealthconferences.org.uk/careers/). Nothing stopping you doing a stand alone Masters though.

I wouldn't rule out epidemiology though, as it would give you a very good basis for future research, and if you can develop those kind of quantitaive skills it would stand you in good stead. How about trying to do some kind of crash course over the summer to get you up to speed? Or talking to students who may have had a similar level of maths experience to you before they starte and see what their perspective is. You might even find some online resources that might help you improve your confidence (e.g. http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~mb55/msc/maths/maths.htm)

Ultimately, if you want a research career, feeling comfortable with stats is really really helpful. In many scenarios you may well defer to a statistican for complex analyses, but if you can at least ask him/her the right questions in the first place that will be really helpful to you.

Good luck! :-)

======= Date Modified 10 Jul 2009 12:05:28 =======
I'm not really sure what honorary doctorates etc mean but I'm sure they don't enable application for an honorary post-doc.

I think it's just a way of lauding someone's achievements. But the scenario you report does come under the heading of 'scraping the barrel'. It's one thing to award them to people like Nelson Mandela, major contributers to the arts etc but the above actually devalues the concept of 'honorary degrees'. I don't think people in the real world change their perception of PhDs etc based on things like this.

Besides, surely if the Uni of Bolton were to award an honorary doctorate for comedy, it should go to PETER Kay. Maybe someone in admin just made a mistake.