piachaete | pea-uh-keet

WHO THE FREAK ARE YOU?
Hi, my name is Pia (she/her)! I’m a PhD student at the University of Copenhagen working on miniaturization, mainly in annelids, but I’ll take any teeny tiny invertebrate you throw at me really (don’t actually throw them at me, thanks, neither of us would appreciate that I think). I did my undergrad and MSc at The University of Oslo, graduating in the summer of 2025. I’m also a pisces.

WHAT’S THE BLOG FOR?
I made this blog to informally and hopefully entertainingly document my ~journey~ on my PhD, practically, emotionally, spiritually, academically, socially, or whatever other -ally’s I may experience. It remains to be seen what shape this blog will take, and I’m pretty excited to see where it goes, to be honest with you. I’d like to think if you’re also entrenched in academia, either doing a PhD or elsewhere in your career, you can maybe find some commonalities here. I think this blog would be a success if someone read it and went “bro no way, me too!!! I’m so glad someone else had [INSERT EXPERIENCE HERE]” at literally anything I write. Academia is a team sport and if something I say resonates, well that’s just swell. I think it’d also be a success if it helps me, in any way, in processing any thoughts, feelings or opinions about who I am and what I do. 

 WHAT ARE YOU INTO, LIKE, ACADEMICALLY?
Don’t worry about this bit if you’re not into the sciency-specifics, that’s not really what this blog is about, anyway. But, as I mentioned above, I’m looking at miniaturization in Annelida (read: worms—how did they get small?). I’m doing this mostly from a genomics point of view, which is to say, looking at their DNA. I can’t (and won’t) really tell you much more than that, unfortunately. Ideas are currency in academia, and I’ll never be blogging about unpublished work. If you’re legitimiately interested in invertebrate genomics, though, shoot me an email and we can talk.

WHAT DOES PIACHAETE MEAN?
Polychaetes are a kind of marine worm (well not really they’re not a real group) (but like, they are) (but also kind of not) (that’s paraphyletics, baby), and my name is Pia 🙂 That’s simple math, baby, the joke writes itself.