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Safia Chaudhary is the Teaching/Research Degrees Administrator at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, looking after the MSc, MRes and PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience.
How long have you been in the Faculty of Brain Sciences and what is your current role?
I’ve been at the ICN since November 2017, and started out as the receptionist there. Since then I’ve had a few role changes, and am now the Teaching/Research Degrees Administrator. It feels like the time has passed very quickly. I’m grateful for having been able to explore a few different roles before settling into this one.
What aspect of your work most excites you and why?
I really enjoy the start of the academic year, even though it’s busy – it’s great to see the achievements of the cohort that’s finishing up and at the same time meet our newest students. We try to make continuous improvements to our programmes so seeing our changes, big and small, take effect is also really satisfying.
What working achievements are you most proud of?
I’ve been a Wellbeing Champion for most of my time at the ICN, and though it’s not directly related to my role I do feel it’s added a lot to my experience at work. During the pandemic especially, the conversations that I ended up having with colleagues and students because of this really opened my eyes to how much we all have going on in life, and how important it can be just to talk things out.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that people might not know
I used to be a librarian, and am very enthusiastic about books…my favourite genres are Fantasy/Sci-Fi but I will read anything. My favourite part of being a librarian was giving recommendations and running book clubs – reading is the one subject I could talk about forever!
What’s the best advice you would give your younger self?
Get out of your own way – you’ll never know if you can do something successfully until you try it, so don’t give in to self-doubt (and also don’t read in the dark so much, it’s bad for your eyes).