Profile

I look at how nature has used proteins to build things (like viruses or the scaffolding inside your cells) and see if I can make similar structures. At the moment I am working with a group of people trying to make a medicine that would work like a virus but instead of making you ill it would make you better.

I usually get in to work just before 9am, and go straight in to the lab to check on the instruments that have been running my experiments the previous night. If it’s all gone ok then I can carry on an set up some new experiments, but quite often something has gone wrong. Figuring out what went wrong can be easy and I can fix it in a few minutes, but sometimes something major goes wrong and we have to get an expert engineer to come and fix it.

Once I’ve got things in the lab sorted, I look at the data from my recent experiments, sometimes I have to re do them (scientists re do things ALOT, we need to be sure the results are correct and not just a fluke). Then it’s lunch time, I often go to a seminar (which is a talk where another scientist explains their work) after lunch.

Then I might have a meeting with my supervisor (A supervisor is a more experienced scientist who can help to guide your research) to discuss my latest results. Then I sit down to plan roughly what I want to get done in the next few days and book the instruments I need. Any time I have left, I usually spend analysing my results or making presentations to tell other scientist about my work. I usually head home around 5:30 or 6:00pm