The 2011/2012 academic year ended yesterday. I think it is my 12th at Surrey – time flies. There is still some marking to do, and the undergraduates will only learn their exam results next week, but semester is mostly done. The undergraduates are off home, to summer jobs, on holidays etc, and in the case of most of the second-year BSc students, they are off to companies and labs for their Professional Training Years.

So it will  be quieter, but not only the academics but also the postgrad students, postdocs and other staff will be around in the Department. We academics will be sorting out our summer plans too. We’ll be arranging holidays, conference trips, writing papers with our PhD students and postdocs, writing to-do lists of things we absolutely must do over summer.

I am currently booking flights etc for my third and final visit in August to a Professional Training Year student working at a lab called Leitat just outside Barcelona. It will be good to catch up on his work on carbon-dioxide capture and fuels cells powered by bacteria.

Then I should probably start work on that to-do list, and on that paper with my PhD student.