unisBREAKFAST and Seminar in the Arctic – Navigating the CoVid-19 Restrictions
Another semester has come to an end at UNIS, and although we hoped that things would be back to normal this semester, it was not so. However, this would not stop us from having unisBREAKFAST and bioCEED seminar! Although it was a it tricky and a lot of restrictions to take into consideration, we managed to arrange two unisBREAKFASTs and one seminar.
We started off this year’s first bioCEED seminar with master student Daniela Walch. Due to the CoVid-19 regulations at the time, we could not use UNIS as a meeting place. The seminar was therefore taken to the digital platform Zoom, which we all know quite well by now. At this time the bachelor students were not allowed into UNIS, and we therefore thought it would be nice to meet up and watch it together somewhere else. Of course, this comes with a bunch of other regulations, as this would be characterized as a “private event”. In order to follow the restrictions on the number of people on events, it was therefore decided that for this seminar we would focus on the new biology bachelor students. Luckily for us (sort of), avalanche danger had caused us to evacuate to the student housing Sjøskrenten. As we were then all in the same cohort, we could enjoy bioCEED-sponsored pizza together in the Sjøskrenten living room, while Daniela took us into the world of satellites with her seminar “Changing perspectives – Taking the bird view on Biology”. During her seminar Daniela told us about her background and master thesis, as well as giving the students an introduction of the use of satellites in biology.
The week after it was time for the semester’s first unisBREAKFAST. Due to still quite strict restrictions on the number of people on events, this round of unisBREAKFAST became more of a bioBREAKFAST. The biology bachelor students could finally go to UNIS again and were invited to Lassegrotta, where master student Sebastian Andersen told us about his background and thesis. He also took the students through the process of planning a master thesis and the obstacles you might meet through what he called “the game of moans”.
Finally, it was time for the last unisBREAKFAST, and this time we could have a proper unisBREAKFAST open for all students (with a number of people within the restrictions, of course). Breakfast, coffee and cinnamon buns were served in Møysalen, where the students had a cosy breakfast together. PhD student Cheshtaa Chitkara started of our morning with a presentation of her PhD thesis, where she works on the time series sampling stations IsA, studying changes in community composition of microbial eukaryotes, in relation to climate change.
Although it took some planning, and re-planning, we were very happy that we could keep the tradition of arranging unisBREAKFAST and bioCEED seminars. We also want to thank all the presenters and the students who helped preparing breakfast and carrying stacks of pizza. Thank you all for a great semester!
Mathilde Eikefjord and Pernille Nerlie
