A day in the life of a senior scientific adviser

Dalia started with NICE 2 and a half years ago, in the technology appraisals team. She’s currently senior scientific adviser in the science policy and research team, in the Science, Evidence and Analytics Directorate. Here, she takes NICEtimes through her typical day.

Dalia Dawoud, senior scientific adviser

7am

I am a night owl, not an early bird. So 7am is the earliest I can get out of bed. The first thing I do every day is make a cup of coffee. Once I log in, I usually start by taking a look at NICE Space. It’s like reading the morning newspaper.

I live in Mill Hill East, North London and have lived in or around this area for the last 18 years. I love the area as it does not feel like you are in a busy metropolitan city at all. It's green and leafy and makes you feel like you're outside of London, while being just a short underground ride away from all the hustle and bustle of the city centre.

Before the London office moved to Stratford, I used to take the underground to work. It took me around 50 minutes. I’ve visited the new office once, so far, and I travelled by car that day. This seems to be the most convenient way, as public transport options would take me much longer than I can cope with.

Dalia Dawoud, senior scientific adviser

10am

I normally have quite a few meetings lined up to discuss the progress of our different tasks and deliverables.

The key stakeholders that we work with are our project partners. These include academics, researchers, pharmaceutical companies, small and medium enterprises, other international health technology assessment agencies, and funders such as the European Commission, Wellcome Trust and Gates Foundation.

12pm

At the office, lunch time was a good opportunity to have a chat with colleagues, which I miss now. I also tend to check my social media accounts at lunch time! This has become an important activity for me, especially with the lack of any face to face networking opportunities.

1pm

In the afternoon, I have a regular catch-up meeting with my team members. These tend to be structured around the progress of their allocated project work. This can include checking progress against deadlines and planning for upcoming project deliverables. It covers activities such as workshops, project meetings, task working groups, conference submissions and presentations.

We also discuss arrangements for the scheduled internal activities that our team is responsible for delivering. Examples of these include the technical forum and science, evidence and analytics research club.

3pm

Other meetings that might be in my afternoon diary are the science, policy and research management team meeting, as well as a number of NICE-wide working groups.

5:30pm to 6pm

I tend to finish around this time. Currently, this just means getting out of my small office room and starting to think about what we'll have for dinner!

When I was working from the office, I used to just head home straight away, as I had to pick my daughter up from her afterschool care club. Thankfully, I do not need to do this anymore, now she is in high school and can take the bus back home!

6pm onwards

The evening is always spent watching Egyptian TV while finishing off my extra-curricular activities. This includes my tasks as associate editor for 2 journals, Value in Health and Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy. I may have to invite reviewers to review a paper submitted to the journal, or examine reviewer comments to make a decision and communicate it to the authors.