This week’s PhDetails is with Dimitrios - Georgios Kontopoulos who does his PhD at Imperial College London at Silwood park - a place I think of fondly since I did my masters there! Dimitris told me that he grew up in the beautiful city of Volos in central Greece. For his BSc, he studied Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Democritus University of Thrace. Soon after, Dimitris realised that he wanted to do research that bridges molecular biology and ecology & evolution. To this end, he did a Master's degree in Biodiversity Informatics and Genomics at Imperial College London. After the Master's, Dimitris stayed at Imperial to pursue a PhD in thermal adaptation of ectotherms, combining bioinformatics, phylogenetic comparative approaches, and ecoinformatics. Enjoy!
Well let’s start off talking about completely unscientific stuff: What is your favourite band/musical artist pre 1980?
Leonard Cohen.
Favourite band/musical artist post 1980?
The Offspring.
Favourite movie?
All the Star Wars ones (yes, you read that right). Also the Cabin in the Woods.
Do you listen to podcasts?
Recently, not so much. I used to listen to Not So Standard Deviations (http://nssdeviations.com/) though.
Where do you study and who are your supervisors?
I am based at Imperial College London’s Silwood Park campus. My main supervisor is Samraat Pawar (http://pawarlab.org) but I am also supervised by Tim Barraclough and Colin Prentice.
What year of your PhD are you in?
I’m in my final (fourth) year. In fact, my viva is at the end of the month! *crosses fingers*
Who’s giving you the money – and for how long?
I was awarded a Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet Doctoral Training Partnership from NERC, which paid me for three and a half years.
Do you have any publications?
As weird as it may read, I currently have eight publications. I got an early start by publishing the work from my BSc thesis (a bioinformatics pipeline). I then did an internship at a research institute for a year, which yielded two more publications on bioinformatic methods development. The five remaining publications arose from either my PhD research or side projects/collaborations, and cover a broader range of topics (from thermal physiology and molecular biology to modelling a zombie-like outbreak). You can find links to my publications and preprints on my website (http://dgkontopoulos.io/publications/). Finally, I would like to mention that the research that I am most proud of has not been published yet. Stay tuned! :)
Did you do a masters – where was it and was it about?
I did a Masters by Research also at Imperial College London on Biodiversity Informatics and Genomics.
Do you ever do fieldwork?
No, all my research to this day has been done using computers. Having said that, I’d love to do a little bit of fieldwork one day.
How many PhDs did you apply for – what were you looking for?
Just the one I ended up getting. After doing a Master’s project in Samraat Pawar’s group, I got so hooked on investigating how organisms respond to temperature changes that I did not look elsewhere.
What one piece of advice would you give to a masters student applying to PhDs now?
Keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities. For example, many PhDs are advertised on Twitter and, therefore, following a good mix of people could help you find that cool PhD project that you’ve always been dreaming of.
How often do you meet with your supervisors?
Throughout my PhD, I met with my main supervisor every 1-2 weeks. Meetings with my two other supervisors were organised whenever I wanted some feedback related to their areas of expertise or had finished a draft manuscript/thesis chapter.
What supervisor traits are important to you?
I love working independently, often connecting ideas and methods from very different fields to address challenging questions. Thus, the ideal supervisor in my book is someone who does not micromanage (except when needed), has broad interests, and is open to new approaches. Thankfully, these traits were shared by all three of my PhD supervisors.
What do you think are the worst supervisor traits?
1. Treating students not as complex human beings but as paper generators (see PhDcomics #1126).
2. Approaching projects with tunnel vision, losing interest in them as soon as they take a different direction from the main focus of the lab.
In one sentence what is your PhD about?
I am studying the factors that constrain the ability of ectotherms (mainly – but not exclusively – microbes) to adapt to different thermal environments.
What has been your academic highlight of the last year?
Having received very positive feedback from an important figure in my field.
Have you had an academic lowpoint of the last year – if so what happened?
It’s not exactly a lowpoint but thesis writing can become a source of great anxiety, especially as the submission deadline draws near.
Which academic idol/scientist have you met?
I’m proud to have met and briefly spoken with Jim Brown and Michael Angilletta.
Which academic idol/scientist would you most like to meet?
The list is long but two names that stand out right now are Joe Felsenstein and Jonathan Eisen.
Do you have a favourite paper?
I have many that I read again and again but none of them stands out right now.
What has been your favourite conference so far – why?
By far, the Gordon Research Conference on Unifying Ecology Across Scales. It takes place every 2 years and brings together a wide range of researchers from different fields, working towards identifying links across different levels of biological organisation. I’ve been to it twice and hope to attend it again in the future.
What hours do you typically work?
It’s hard to say, given the nature of my research. Many of my computational analyses inevitably take hours, days, or – rarely – weeks to run. This means that after I set them up, I tend to check their progress and outputs now and then, even before going to bed. I do other things while they run, of course, but there is occasionally a day when I’m just waiting for a job to finish before I can proceed. In any case, when I am on campus, I usually start around 10-10.30 and leave by 4-5.
How do you avoid procrastinating?
I try to set both short-term and long-term deadlines. Having said that, I must admit that I don’t always match them.
What motivates you in your day to day PhD life?
Mainly two things. First, the feeling of accomplishment that one gets after having answered a challenging research question. Second, knowing that after my current project (or PhD) is finished, there is a chance that I will find something quite different to work on, or that I may get to use a different approach in the next project. This explains why my publications span a relatively wide range of topics.
What do you do when you’re not working – how do you balance it with your PhD?
During weekdays, I mainly binge-watch series on Netflix. However, as I mentioned above, I do keep an eye on my jobs running on the university cluster or the lab computers. At weekends, I usually meet up with friends to watch a film, explore a new place, or play games together.
If a genie could grant you one wish to help with your PhD what would you wish for?
It’s too late now, given that my viva is coming soon. However, I’d love to go back in time and inform my past self that one or two particular analyses will take too much time to get right and will not amount to much in the end.
What would be your dream job?
Doing exciting multidisciplinary research at an R1 university or a research institute.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Holding a research-intensive academic position, ideally at a sunny place. One can dream.
One word to sum up your future in academia:
Possible
What do you want to achieve outside of academia in the coming year?
A few days after I submitted my thesis, I bought a gym subscription. I hadn’t had one of those in several years. I hope I can maintain a regular gym schedule in the coming year.
What essential tool hardware/software could you not do your PhD without?
Hardware: The High Performance Computing resources offered by my university.
Software: R, Perl 5, and GNU/Linux.
Who has been your academic role model/inspiration and why?
It is very hard to name a single person. I’ve had research interactions with many people over the last ~10 years. All of them have influenced the way I work in different ways and I wouldn’t be the person I am now without them.
Where is somewhere you would like to work in the future?
I don’t have any particular preference as my research is – to this day – computational, allowing me to collaborate with people from all over the world. Nevertheless, I’d love to be at a place where people do cool research on a wide variety of topics.
Do you have a favourite organism?
I love reptiles in general, even if I haven’t managed to do a research project on them yet. If I had to choose a particular species, that would be the Komodo dragon.
Are there any social interactions/meetings which have enhanced your PhD experience?
We have a weekly seminar series (during term) with most talks given by invited speakers from other universities or departments. We also have a monthly “social seminar” in which internal PhD students can present their latest work and obtain feedback. I found both fascinating as through them I got exposed to fields and approaches that I hadn’t encountered before.
If you could change one thing about your group/department structure what would it be?
Our campus (Silwood Park) focuses on ecology and evolution research and is located ~40 km away from the main campus where the rest of the Department of Life Sciences is. This situation has advantages and disadvantages. One major disadvantage is that we are too dependent on the main campus (in my opinion), even if our needs are very different and not always tended to. If our campus were to become independent, many issues would likely be addressed more efficiently and effectively.
What major question in your subject area is yet to be addressed – why is it important and why isn’t anyone addressing it?
A common assumption in the field of macroecology is that the effects of temperature on biological traits (e.g., population growth rate) reflect the effects of temperature on the activity of a single rate-limiting enzyme. Recent studies have shown that this assumption can be relaxed to some extent, but nobody (to my knowledge) has done experiments (e.g., in microbes) to simultaneously investigate how changes in temperature influence whole-genome expression, enzyme activity, and biological trait performance. Measurements would need to be obtained at a few different temperatures (ideally more than 5), with multiplicate replicates per temperature, making the undertaking far from trivial. It would, however, improve our understanding of how organisms respond to climate change.
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