I did my secondment at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands during the months of April and May as part of my ESR project integrated in the ITN SmartAge.
At Wageningen University, I joined the division of Human Nutrition and Health, more specifically the chair group of Nutrition, Metabolism and Genomics.
This secondment was a great learning experience. I had the chance to follow some courses including “Nutrition and the Brain”, “Scientific Publishing” and “Consumer behavior: Theory and applications in health and sustainability of food choices” (still ongoing).
“Nutrition and the Brain” was a particularly insightful course because it allowed me to improve my knowledge about the role of nutrition in brain function and how this correlates with brain disorders, there was also a big focus on the gut-brain axis. This provided me a good background for the data analysis that I performed with a dataset from a human intervention study so-called NuAge. I explored the correlation between nutrition, inflammation, and cognitive performance among elderly.
The “Scientific Publishing” course, offered by the Wageningen Graduate Schools was also very pertinent and it gave me key knowledge about the scientific publishing process that is such an important part of any PhD project.
In the chair group everyone was very welcoming, helpful, and eager to share their experiences and insights about their projects and expertise. I had the chance to join some chair group meetings and attend presentations about the work of other colleagues. It was very enriching to understand the dynamics of another research group and to obtain insights about the work developed there, also by other PhD candidates.
Even though I consider the secondment at Wageningen University and Research a very positive experience, sometimes it was difficult to find the link between the research developed here and my own project, as my focus lies on eating behaviour and nutrition communication strategies. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that the two fields must be highly linked to achieve successful improvements in the cognitive health of older adults. For this reason, I consider that this experience was very important. Now I have more insights on how to integrate findings about the gut-brain axis in aging in my research, to explore the best ways to communicate about this topic with aging populations and promote food choice improvements.
It was sometimes stressful to conjugate the tasks from my project at Zurich University of Applied Sciences and the secondment, so I had to develop my time management skills, which I also consider a positive learning from this secondment.
Overall, I classify this secondment as very insightful and enriching and I will surely bring some learnings from it to my own PhD project.
I would like to thank everyone at Wageningen University that received me very well and made me feel welcome, part of the team and supported during this period.