My biggest challenge in these three years at the University of Kent has been to combine my volunteering and extra activities hours with my PhD. It's not been easy, and sometimes I went through very tough moments. But I got a lot of benefits from that! I have learnt how to manage my time effectively and organise my days carefully in order to do everything at the best of my capabilities! 

I have volunteered more than 600 hours in three years, helping our Students' Unions (GK Unions) and Team Medway. I have been awarded with three KSCV Gold Plus certificates in the past three years. Volunteering has helped me to become a better person! And I have enjoyed every single moment of this incredible experience! I have learnt so many things in terms of organisation, self-confidence, time management, leadership and volunteering itself and at the same time I have met fantastic people!

And the GK Unions Awards nights have been a fantastic experience!

The Life-Time Achievement Award is given to the student that has dedicated 2+ years to Team Medway and for the impact on sport at Medway.

"This was the most straightforward award to give and I am sure all of the Team Medway would agree - this person has been an ambassador for Team Medway and sport at Medway and been the catalyst for the success of two clubs. Juggling her PhD, this student has been the president of the basketball club for two years, securing nearly £2000 of sponsorship, been an integral part of the Team Medway Executive and probably her proudest achievement, has re-established the Women's Basketball Team, who played their first Varsity match this week and who battled throughout and only narrowly lost. The impact this student has on sport at Team Medway is unmeasurable and so the Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Chiara Gattoni."

Mine was not a proper dress to impress at the Sports Awards Night. Running from the laboratory to the Awards, but I made it!

This is awarded to the club who who has improved significantly from the previous year or throughout the year by demonstrating outstanding organisation, commitment and initiative to improve and develop.

"And the winner is: Women's Basketball!!! Women's Basketball have had a great year. The team has come so far, especially as over half had never played basketball before joining University. This time last year they were not even a club and yet now boast 18 members, play in a local league and recently competed in Varsity which they battled through to the end, only narrowly losing 35-30. They have entered BUCS next season and look to continue their success. We wish them all the best in BUCS!"

Winner of the Medway Employability Points Competition!

With 245 points, I got the highest scoring obtained during the Medway Employability Festival, October 2017.

"Chiara was very moved by the scenes from her home country of Italy following the earthquake of August/September 2016. She wanted to raise money for the Save the Children charity that was supporting the area. She organised a bucket collection on campus and impressively got about 18 students to help on the day, this included members of her basketball club, friends and members of RAG. This was a great example of one student inspiring others, uniting the campus and, to top it all, raising over £300 in just three hours."

As President of the Team Medway Womens Basketball Club I have organised a basketball Give It a Go Session opened to all girls who wanted to try a new sport and have some fun together.

My message to promote the event:

‘Hello, I am Chiara, we are a developing basketball team who welcomes players of all skill levels and aims to encourage everyone to try basketball. We enjoy teaching basketball to women and inspiring girls to take up the sport both socially and competitively. Come and join us for some games and basketball exercises! Let’s play for fun!’

It was such a successful event! 18 girls joined us for the session and everyone had lots of fun!

As Team Medway Basketball Clubs we organised a Level 2 Basketball Table Official Course in our campus. We gave our members the chance to become table officials and work during games. The course was paid by our GK Unions.

I joined it as well and found it very useful! I'll be working on the court soon!

Since September 2017, I have been working for the GK Unions as Give it a Go! Team Leader.

Give it a Go is a thrilling programme of events (which goes from sport to art, from music festivals to pop corn night movies, etc) and is opened to all Kent and Greenwich students at Medway who want to try something new, learn new skills and meet new people, at a very friendly price. 

As Team Leader I had to attend the sessions, be in charge with the setup, participants registration, supervision, pictures and videos for promotion.

At the same time, I was allowed to give Nerf Wars a go as well..!! 

Presenting my first PhD study at one of the biggest sports science conferences has been absolutely an unforgettable experience! Moreover it's been a fantastic chance for me to discuss about science with researchers from all over the world!

I have also attended The Physiological Society Conference 2016 and a 2-day symposium on fatigue (main topic of my phD) organised by the Royal Society in 2017. I found them both very stimulating and useful for my phd and my personal knowledge.

I have worked for two years as Mentor of a Massive Online Course (MOOC), entitled "The Science of Endurance and Training Performance" which has been organised by the School of Sports and Exercise Science, at the University of Kent. My role, as an expert in the topic, has been to reply to questions and give feedbacks to participants. The course has lasted 6 weeks and has covered several topics such as muscular fatigue, cognitive fatigue, nutrition, training and exercise performance.

My biggest achievement: explain difficult topics in a very simplistic way to a non-expert audience!

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/endurance-performance

As a PhD Student I have attended several Researcher Development Programme Workshops organised by the Graduate School at the University of Kent. The Researcher Development Programme has given me a full range of skills which have improved my effectiveness as researcher and equipped me with some general employability skills useful in a variety of careers. 

https://www.kent.ac.uk/graduateschool/skills/programmes/tstindex.html

Workshops attended:

1. Kickstart your PhD: Guidance, Skills and the Researcher Development Assessment;
2. Managing your time effectively;
3. Effective researcher;
4. Introduction to Refworks;
5. Using Mind Map® for Note Taking
6. Effective reading;
7. An introduction to research and research methods for sciences;
8. Basic Matlab programming techniques;
9. Criticism and Confidence - Dealing with Impostor Syndrome;
10. Getting published: Routes to successfully turn your work into papers;
11. Measuring Research Impact;
12. Keeping up to date with the literature;
13. Publishing rights and wrongs: principles of copyright and open accessing publishing;
14. Managing your research data;
15. Networking and Personal Impact;
16. Voice projection;
17. How to create an exciting podcast: storytelling, presentation and on-camera skills.

Attending these workshops has also been a great opportunity for networking and meeting other PhD students!

I have also attended six trainings organised by our Students' Union, which provided me with the proper knowledge and skills to lead, advertise and promote societies/sports clubs and to deal with/avoid conflicts and solve problems within a group.

Trainings attended:

• War? What is it good for?
• GK Unions Committee Training
• Student Leader Training - Introduction to Committees
• Team Medway Executive Training
• Marketing Training