Fellowship report by Aniket Singh
Two months might not seem like a long time, but thinking back to everything I did at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Penicuik, Scotland, United Kingdom, it seems to be a very beautiful journey of my life. I was selected for a two-month fellowship starting from 01/05/2018 to 30/06/2018 on the topic of “Regional scale nitrogen budgeting” under the guidance of Dr. Ulrike Dragosits. I reached Edinburgh on 8nd may 2018. I am very grateful to Edward Cornell, Nicholson Thomas and Dr. Ute Skiba for their help and affection during my stay at Edinburgh.
Research work and training
At the very first meeting, I had a thorough discussion with my co-mentor, Edward Cornell about my research work and an outline of research work was formulated. Firstly, I was provided training in the methodology of preparing an NH3 inventory from Indian agricultural data at district level (Punjab). The inventory preparation requires activity data and emission factors. Initially, for 4-5 days, I had also attended courses like “An Introduction to R” and “An Introduction to Statistics in R”. These courses were taught by Edward Cornell. To collect all the emission factors, a detailed review of literature was carried out. For this purpose, Dr. Niveta Jain and Dr. Ulrike provide me with many research papers.
Every week we used to have a very informative meeting with Dr. Ulrike, Edward Cornell and Nicholson Thomas who use to describe each and every step of my research work very clearly. It was a really nice course which gave me an opportunity to learn and apply the gained knowledge in my own project work.
Personal reflection
I used my weekends and breaks to enjoy the scenic beauty of Scotland. I can’t imagine I will ever have another opportunity to do so much travelling in such a short period as part of my career. I have developed an inner attachment with every place I travelled to and it will stay forever in my memories. I have a special attachment for Edinburgh and my favorite places includes highlands of Scotland, the London Bridge, Glasgow, and the Scotland Museum. Unlike in India, in the UK people work hard for 5 days a week and enjoy the full weekend. I am highly impressed by the lifestyle and the systematic approach of the government at the very grassroot level also and I have also developed a habit of saying “thank you” and “sorry” for every small things.
