The store room looking much tidier after Oli and I tackled it with our mighty intern superpowers of manual labour.

Hi COSMOS readers!

I’m Phill English, the newly anointed intern replacing Katy Storch, who is off on a new adventure involving coral, crabs and (hopefully) some cocktails.

Like Katy, I hail from far-away shores: Perth, Western Australia! I’ll be here in the COSMOS offices for a little over a month, and I’m really looking forward to getting some insight into how the publishing industry works when science is involved.

I arrived on Monday, somewhat prepared for the role from having read both Katy and Oli’s blog posts about the hectic nature of the COSMOS offices. Despite the warning, I was still slightly overwhelmed at being sat in front of a computer and asked to research a story in a field way outside of my expertise. It was a story about a prospective research path for developing a vaccine for HIV. You can read it here.

I emailed researchers for comments, and managed to wrangle an early-morning phone interview with an independent expert to provide some perspective on the new research being shown. I’ve also sat in on a brainstorming session for poster ideas, and been assigned the task of researching topics and pictures for showing the evolution of eyes. I think the COSMOS editors favour the immersion method of getting newbies up to speed, and it seems to work.

Outside of words and pictures, I’ve familiarised myself with the sweet taste of Space Food Sticks, met the part-time office dog and team mascot Gypsy, and helped Oli clear space downstairs for the new batch of magazines to be delivered this week. Turns out interns can also provide cheap manual labour - but hey, someone has to move those boxes!

Alright, better get back to researching my next article about nanowires, which I’m sure is going to bring back a lot of memories about my undergraduate days studying nanotechnology. Talk soon!

~ Phill