SAEON's Graduate Student Network becomes a hub for networking and collaboration

Learning from the experts. Students attending the GSN Workshop at Skukuza in the Kruger National Park get to learn more about grass cover and carrying capacity. "My experience on the SAEON GSN has been both exciting and invaluable," says Amanda Northrop, a masters student at Rhodes.

- By Diane Southey, SAEON Graduate Student Network Committee

One of the aims of the SAEON Graduate Student Network is to provide a network in which graduate students can feel comfortable to share ideas, collaborate with one another, and get a broader understanding of ecological research with an expanded context in which to view their own research.

The following note from one of the GSN members, Amanda Northrop, indicates how the GSN has evolved to become a hub for networking and collaboration:

"Collaboration is one of the key purposes of the SAEON GSN. Through meeting other like-minded young scientists at the yearly function, one forms lasting relationships and friendships that can benefit one later on.

My experience on the SAEON GSN has been both exciting and invaluable. I am the only person in the maths or the stats department doing masters at Rhodes who has an interest in life sciences. Before I left for the Kruger National Park to attend the GSN annual workshop last year, I was under the impression that other students with my interests were few and far between. What a pleasure it was then, to meet two other mathematicians at the workshop from UCT and be able to talk about the various methods we had been using in our theses.

This last holiday, I advised one of the other students I had met at the Kruger Park workshop, Moagi, on the statistics he needed to use for his project. Moagi works at Kruger, and arranged for us to stay in one of the chalets at the research camp. Kruger Park was fully booked out that month - if it weren't for the GSN workshop I would not have been able to take a holiday in Kruger, and Moagi would not have been able to get help with statistics. We both ended up benefiting greatly.

At the September symposium, I had the opportunity to work with Diane Southey who is a fellow mathematician from UCT. Hopefully we'll be able to apply some of the methods I've been using to her thesis."

Amanda has shown just how easy it can be to derive benefit from GSN networking!!