 Hi, thanks so much for agreeing to do this interview. Should we get started? Will you tell me a little bit about yourself? I'm Saigur Mufcon and I'm from India and from India I'm from Assam. That's my state and I have a background in climate science and policy and I'm working on my PhD on citizen science and environmental monitoring in India. So I want to look into how citizen science can be promoted or enhanced in India and look into the barriers and challenges and opportunities that is present in India for environmental monitoring so that it can help in in the SDGs, in accounting for the sustainable development goals. That's really interesting. Thank you. So what did you study previously to get to the point you're doing your PhD? Yeah, so my bachelor's is in jewellery and I changed into climate science and policy for my master's which I did from Terry School of Advanced Studies. So that school or university is specialized only for sustainable development. So we had courses like from engineering like sustainable engineering or urban development and then I was part in the like I was in the Brooklyn state on work on climate science and policy. So after that I worked in a couple of NGOs and from there actually my whole idea came into being of like why citizen science is required and how it can help in sustainable development. Amazing that's like quite the journey to get here isn't it? It has been a journey. Okay and the final bit about telling me about yourself. I think it's the most important question. What's your favorite color? Either blue or red. What attracted you to the Stockholm Environment Institute in the first place? What made you apply? It was about the amount of work that they have done in this field. So they have a very good name and the quality of work. So they've done brilliant amount of work like starting from the ideas even like the planetary boundary concept which was started by rocks from who was one of the directors of SCI. So like ever since I've been a big fan of them following their work that thought why not try out to be a PhD student there. So I just applied. Did it live up to the expectation studying here? Till now it's quite good. It's amazing my my supervisors are quite amazing. They have a lot of ideas and yeah it is quite up to the thing that I have thought of before coming here. It's quite nice. So what has your experience studying been like? Well in terms of because I started during the COVID period so I've not met a lot of people but in terms of studying has been a good experience. Well I also come from India so there's a lot of difference between our teaching style and the one you have here. But the teachers are very helpful. They give us a lot of ideas also and they also listen to our ideas. So we can work a lot on this. So they actually help to grow a hybrid kind of idea which makes a lot of sense. So I think it's a very good experience here from the professors. So has most of your research been done virtually? It has been done virtually till now but I hope like in a few days I'll go to the department. How do you think the teaching has adapted to being online? Have you had a good experience with everything online? It's fine. I don't know how other students experience because they might be from undergrads or post-grads but as a PhD student it's quite easy to work virtually because it's mostly discussions and we don't have long classes. So for us. Yeah. So looking back at the time that you have studied here which from the science of things hasn't been very long, what has been the standout experience for you? So if you look back what's the one thing that you can remember immediately? My supervisor is helping out with you know giving out like you can attend this kind of conferences or this kind of summer schools or something like that. So this help would not have come anywhere else but like where I have experienced from but here they have helped me a lot to get myself exposed to a lot of things which I like. Yeah that sounds really good. So if you had to summarize the Stockholm Environment Institute and your experience in three words what would they be? It's a very good learning experience. It's awesome. Let's say it is awesome yeah. I was definitely over three words. It is awesome the three words. Okay there we go I like that. Okay so the final thing we're going to do is if you were talking to someone who is thinking about applying here what would you say? I would ask them if they at first it's very important for those people to have their research interest in this area and if they have this would directly approach the professors and the researchers here so they are quite helpful and they reply back pretty quickly so I would say that if they have a research interest they should definitely have life after talking with their professors. Definitely would you have any advice for them? Yeah they should have a very clear idea about what they're applying for not like clear as in like what they are going to do but where they want to do their research and not be vague about it and this will actually this is the most important thing I have actually talked to a number of people and the most important thing which I have seen is that they're very vague about what they want to do so be clear about what they want to do and this will help them to connect with the professor who is working on that certain research area. That's really good advice thank you very much. That is all of the questions I have for you. Is there anything else you think is important for anyone watching these or anything else you'd just like to add? It's fine I think your questions have covered a lot of things. Well thank you. Well if that's it then I will let you get back home with your important PhD research thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you bye.