I’m Carlos, Carlos Murillo and I’m doing an MRes on Spinal Pain at the CPR Spine; the
Centre of Precision Rehabilitation in Spinal Pain at the University of Birmingham.
I decided on the University of Birmingham, because I wanted to start a PhD and I was
looking for a specific research masters, so I was searching for different masters in Europe,
but I found the MRes Spinal Pain that combined what I wanted: research and the opportunity
to develop my research skills and the opportunity to do it in a field that I really like, which
is research on spinal pain.
So both together were the most important things to choose Birmingham.
I think you’ll have advantages and disadvantages.
The main advantage is that if you are looking for doing a PhD after the master’s, you,
with the MRes, you have a very very good start, you get very very good research skills and
you have the opportunity to work with researchers of top level.
On the other hand you have to work a little bit more than taught students.
In my case I used to be more with postgraduates with other schools, because when you are a
MRes student you have access to a specific place at the library, you can meet a lot of
other postgraduates, PhDs, MRes.
In the case of our school you can be in contact with other PhD students, so it depends, where
are you working, because for example in my case in the first part of my experience here
in Birmingham I was in contact with postgraduate students from other disciplines, but when
I was working on my data collection I was in contact with PhD students of my own School.
Well, in my particular case, this masters was what I was looking for, because I did
a previous masters back in my country, in Spain, but as I wanted to do a PhD I felt
that I needed more research skills.
So the best thing is being in contact with experts and they provide you with good feedback
and they bring your work to the next level, so that is really really good.
After my graduation, I want to have a couple of weeks of holidays I think I deserve and
hopefully I hope to be accepted for a scholarship that I applied for the start of a PhD.
So, hopfully, fingers crossed, everything will be alright.
The MRes in Spinal Pain is based on the CPR Spine.
The CPR Spine is a research group, a new research group at the University of Birmingham and
they have the state of the art facilities for research on spinal pain, like shear wave
elastography that is the machine that I’m working.
With that machine you can look at the stiffness of the muscles and other tissues.
Another thing that they have, and I think it is one of the universities around the world
that they have, is the high dens EMG, which is a very very balanced piece of equipment
that allows you to see the muscle activity distortion so that is really really good.
I think the first piece of advice I can provide to new students is, be aware about what they
want to do; the MRes is focussed on research so it is perfect for someone who is looking
to continue with a PhD.
Also, what is your interest in the topic, in this case, in the MRes Spinal Pain you
are working on Spinal Pain, so you’ll have to like that topic because I think at the
end you are working on a specific topic for a year so you have to like, because if not,
sometimes it could be a little uphill, I guess, but be sure about these two things.