Profile

I live and work in Oxford but often travel to the North East to spend time with my family. I love to cook and try to try new foods whenever I can. In my spare time I play in a brass band, and have performed at some of the finest concert venues in the world, such as The Sage Gateshead, Symphony Hall Birmingham and the Royal Albert Hall. To relax I like to go on walks, or go for a few frames of snooker with my friends.

Viruses are parasites which infect host cells. They rely on the host to provide all the cellular machinery required to allow the virus to replicate, and then spread.

Viruses infect specific organs or cell types of the body, and I work on Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) which exclusively infects the cells of the liver. The liver is an interesting organ as it provides an environment which is not rich in oxygen, and our cells have developed ways of surviving and working in these low oxygen environments. This provides the viruses with a challenge as the host cell machinery available may be altered in these low oxygen conditions.

I work on understanding how viruses replicate in low oxygen conditions, as this may highlight new host cell factors which could be druggable. Identification of these targets is fundamental in developing new anti-viral therapies.

I’m a big coffee drinker, so that is the first thing on my to do list for the day. I live a 15 minute walk away from my lab, so I enjoy a nice stroll into work (even when the weather is awful!).

We have a big open office at work, where we can sit at our desks to do computer work, and chat with other lab members, discuss experiments, and most importantly – ask for help.

We have a lot of meetings, where we will discuss projects in more details, plan big experiments, and discuss what we are going to publish in scientific papers.

In the lab I do lots of different experiments, all of which require specific techniques and skills. It’s great to be part of a team, as everyone has their own speciality, so there is always someone to ask for help and learn from. I also spend a lot of time in the Containment Level 3 lab, where we are allowed to work on more dangerous pathogens and viruses such as Hepatitis C virus, Hepatitis B virus, HIV-1, and SARS-CoV-2.