CELEBRATING THE SMALL VICTORIES
This month was a really important month for my PhD career, starting from the submission of my first paper, to my secondment at the JRC!
In the middle of September, I submitted my first paper, the meta-analyses of the LCA of the P-recovery from Dairy wastewater processes. This paper was a really big challenge for me. I started to do a literature review but considering that there are no environmental assessment studies applied on this combined system (P-recovery system + dairy wastewater treatment), it was decided to work on meta-analyses. I started to collect and scale a series of data in order to assume the environmental impact on the P-recovered process if dairy wastewater is used instead of conventional municipal wastewater. The submission of this paper was a small victory that I had to celebrate! This submission makes me ready to start my workshop in Spain.
On the first of October, I left Sweden to fly to Barcelona with great enthusiasm, which I preserved for all the rest of the days. In Spain, several activities educated us on the dairy industry, dairy wastewater treatment, and current European normative and policies to regulate the management and the use of dairy waste. These activities gave us a lot of information to learn how to communicate to stakeholders that are out of the scientific sphere. It was a really educational workshop!
For me, another important aspect of this workshop was that I finally got to meet the rest of the REFLOW “crew”. I am really glad to have met them, interesting, motivated, and successful people, and above all funny and friendly! We created some great complicity between us that helped us, other than to make a group to spend all the days in a really nice harmony, to create connections and collaborations for our research. It was really much easier to communicate with each of them and figure out how each of us should proceed for the next steps of our PhD career. I have personally discovered a lot for my future research and I am looking forward to starting on that.
In Spain, the workshop concluded with the election of the new ESRs representative, Me! I was not expecting this final result, but I am happy that the other PhD students have confidence and trust in me! A small victory for me, no? Sadly, after two weeks, it was time to say goodbye and to proceed to celebrate my third victory of the month!
At the end of the workshop, I flew to Italy to start my secondment at the JRC-Ispra. First of all, it was really nice to have a warm welcome from the Agriculture and Food Security unit. Considering that my research is mainly focused on the environmental assessment of the production and application of the new fertiliser products throughout the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). During my secondment at the JRC I will work on the development of sustainability metrics for phosphorus recycling processes. These metrics will be used to integrate the various indicators for multicriteria analysis. I am happy to be here, and I am looking forward to meeting and collaborating with all the other colleagues. Indeed, during my first week, I had the chance to meet and discuss my research project with interesting and inspiring individuals, who gave me a lot of ideas to think about, in order to proceed with my research.
This month gave me a lot, professionally and emotionally, and now is the time to carry out all the skills and knowledge that I have acquired, and that I am acquiring. Looking forward to my next research work!
