PHD student has sights set on further future success
A Vision Sciences PHD student has been reflecting on his academic and professional journey after recently winning Best Poster Presentation at BCOVS 2024.
Jordan Watson, who combines his PHD with a lecturing role at GCU, claimed the top prize at the British Congress of Optometry and Vision Science meeting in London last month.
We caught up with Jordan to hear all about his experience, and how his innovative research will help him keep his options open for future success.
Background
“I completed my Undergraduate degree at GCU between 2011 and 2015. I really enjoyed my time here and actually connected with a lot of PHD students. I worked for Specsavers for 12 years and was part of the educational team, and as part of that I got to come back and do some teaching. I really enjoyed it and it made me think of going back into the education side of things.
“Covid then hit and the world stopped, and I then had to try and figure out what I was going to do with my life. It really gave me time to pause and reflect on where I wanted to go next. PHD opportunities then started coming up along with funding opportunities, which made it possible for me as it’s very costly to just leave a career.
“I then spoke to various Universities and Dr Andrew Logan, who had been one of my supervisors while I was an Undergrad, gave me the opportunity to apply and now here we are nearly three years later!”
PHD research
“My PHD is looking at emotional facial expressions and designing a novel test to measure that ability. It’s something that is clinically and anecdotally discussed, in terms of patients who have certain conditions and brain injuries. These conditions reduce their ability to be able to perceive emotional facial expressions.
“This cuts people off from society as they’re not able to judge if someone is being serious or funny. Their ability in general cognitive terms has “decreased”, and their ability to perceive that becomes less.
“At the moment, there is no standardized test to focus on this. My PHD is looking to create a novel way of assessing this and help judge the effect on an individual.
“The latter stage of my PHD, which I’ve recently received approval for, is to look at patients with macular degeneration and see what the effect of that specific condition is on that.”
British Congress of Optometry and Vision Science meeting – London
“BCOVS is an opportunity given to all vision science graduates – it involves lots of early years researchers coming together. It gives us the chance to collaborate, present and even have our work published. The abstracts, which my poster was part of, are then published within a journal from the conference. It’s a great opportunity to get your name out there, and it’s something that’s very different to other conferences.
"The process was basically for me to submit an abstract and then go through an application process. To be given the opportunity to do a poster presentation was a real honour. There was about 20 or 30 of us that showed off our work, some on more common topics like dry eye and myopia.”
Preparing the poster
“A lot of posters tended to focus on one thing, whereas my work has grown arms and legs. Chapter 1 for my PHD should have taken about six months but it’s taken me nearly three years. As well as that, I’ve been involved in other pieces of work as I’ve gone along - it’s basically became a massive topic that I’m constantly adding to.
“The main challenge of a poster presentation is taking all the information you have and making it visually appealing. I’d attended this conference before virtually and also spoke to a few of my colleagues who had presented before. This meant I knew certain things to include and allowed me to be more prepared when it came to questions. I’ve also been lecturing at GCU, so that has helped me to reflect on students' questions as well, which ultimately benefitted me doing this.
“The main feedback I received from the conference was the fact that the poster didn’t just give them loads of interesting information, but the way I presented it was a more novel way of doing things. I included brighter colours and also showed some of the faces which highlighted my research.”
Presentation winner
“There were so many posters so we were split into three sessions. You had about 45 minutes where you were stood beside your poster. The whole congregation then came round and asked questions about it.
“A few people asked me to explain my poster and I reflected on the methods and the aims, but some asked more specific questions. I was also getting asked lots of questions about my work away from my actual presentation slot. It was a two-day conference, so the first day involved me presenting and then there was a delegates dinner at night.
“The College of Optometrists were then there on the second day as the main sponsors of the event. They spoke about how impressed they were with all the posters and presented the runner up from UCL.
“They then said: ‘…and the winner is Jordan Watson.’”
Confidence
“It was just fantastic – especially at this point in my career. It’s very novel to be in an environment where you’re top of the tree, particularly as someone relatively new to the world of research. A lot of the people I was up against have been conducting research for a long time and working in high-end labs, so to get that recognition was actually quite interesting.
“My work wasn’t in the spotlight as much at the last few conferences I attended because it was a novel topic. It helped me think about how to make myself a unique selling point and really inspired me to develop my poster, making it better for BCOVS.”
Future
“The next step would be looking at an international conference, which again will require me to look at how I can develop my presentation further once again. I think the final stages of my PHD will really help with that.
“I was originally due to finish my PHD in October but because I got involved in lecturing at GCU, it’s now been extended to around about Christmas time. It’s actually meant that I’ve been more productive with my PHD because the spare time I do have is so precious. I’m hoping to graduate next July and then the aim would be to work between GCU and a hospital.”
Long-term goals
“When I left here in 2015, I had a ten-year plan. I’ve now pretty much got through that whole plan, so I’ll need to sit down at the start of next year and set out my new objectives.
“I’m probably now at the point where I’m coming to the end of my early career. I’ve done maybe 30,000 sight tests in practice, I’ve worked for three separate health boards and I’ve adapted programmes.
“My PHD has given me an opportunity to step back from the day to day tasks and helped me realise there’s a whole world of opportunity out there.
“My principal has always been to never say ‘no’ but actually think about how I can make it work for me. I’ve been trying to plug in as many opportunities as possible. I don’t look at my PHD as a certificate, I look at it as an opportunity to add another piece to the jigsaw puzzle. When I worked at Specsavers, I had to do 20 tests each day and you were told what do – my PHD has given me the space to make my own choices, make my own mistakes and create my own success.”
Advice to Undergraduate students
“I think it’s about realising there are so many options out there as a graduate from the Vision Sciences department. You can go and work for Specsavers or ASDA, you can work in a hospital, get involved in clinical work, but actually there’s such a big world out there with research. I’ve also got friends who work in the pharmaceutical industry, work in business and even friends who work in politics. There are so many transferable skills from a degree.
“I think of it as a corridor and there’s hundreds of doors. You have so many ways you could go - it’s just important to pick the right ones at the right time. It’s vital you take on any opportunities when they come and that will allow you to decide the direction you want to go in.”
By Ross Clark
Got an SHLS or GSBS story? Email me at Ross.Clark@gcu.ac.uk or message me on Twitter