Dashboard – I'm a Scientist 2024

About Me:

I am a mum of 2 little girls and 1 big dogs (Bohdi the border collie).
I am a Senior Research scientist at Aberystwyth University
in west Wales.

I enjoy cold swims in the sea to wake me up early in the morning and adventures in the woods.
Read more

I live in a little village in West Wales next to the sea. I grew up close to here and I absolutely love being close to where I grew up. I live with my husband, my 2 daughters aged 8 and 10 and my dog, age 12. We are a mad house.

I enjoy everything outdoorsy – from surfing in the summer to cold water swimming in the winter. I love eating breakfast on the beach, even in the rain.

I find science totally fascinating and I am always learning new things too. I used to be a teacher, I still enjoy teaching when I get the opportunity. I love the questions that my kids ask me, they are most fascinated by diseases and why it’s important to get their “jabs”.

I enjoy baking and eating everything that I bake!
My Work:

I am a scientist testing new medicines to inflammation and try to find alternatives to antibiotics.
Read more

This is a photo of me in my favourite work space of the lab. The cell culture hood. Inside this hood everything is kept completely sterile.

I am a senior research scientist at Aberystwyth University. I develop and use new experiments and new drugs to see what works and what doesn’t work. I am looking for alternative therapies to antibiotics, because we are currently approaching an antibiotic resistance crisis! We need alternative treatments to help save lives from infection. I develop models that do not use live animals, so that we can test drugs in an ethical way.

I took part in “I’m a scientist” 13 years ago. I still have my mug!
This is my office space where I do all of my reading and writing.
My Typical Day:

My mornings are usually super busy, I often cram in a quick sea swim or a dog walk before taking my kids to school.

I enjoy my work because every day is different. Some days I will spend the whole day setting up an experiment and some days I will be able to work from home. There is a lot of reading and writing and maths that goes hand in hand with science!
Read more

I usually wake up at around 6.30, not out of choice, but usually because my dog likes to jump on the bed when he’s ready for his breakfast. If he’s awake…the whole house is awake! I like to either take him out early or go for a quick sea swim, just to start the day in a positive frame of mind!

After the school drop off I drive to the lab and start the day by checking in on my emails. We work as a big team and so it’s important to communicate well with everyone in the company. I do lots of different experiments which change from day to day. Some days I will spend a whole day in the cell lab setting up an experiment to test how well our medicine protects living cells from a toxin. These experiments usually take about 4 days to run… they are very tricky… they don’t always work!

I do lots of other types of experiments, many of them are testing how pure our active drug product is. Of course, if we want the drug to eventually be used in humans we have to be 100% sure it is safe and pure! A whole lot of work goes into making sure this is the case. Some of the tests I do are called “SDS-PAGE” and “HPLC (a form of chromatography), both of which can separate out a mixture of proteins and show us how pure it is.

Some days I might be able to work from home. When I work from home I will read about work that other scientists have done, or I will write reports on what I have found so far. Because I work for a company that makes drugs for humans, there is a lot more paper work than other research environments. We have to write very detailed protocols and reports because we have to double check each other’s work and make sure we pass inspections to make sure we are working safely and within the rules!

Candidate CV questions (extra)

Education:

I went to Cardigan Secondary School from year 7 to year 13. Cardigan is a town right on the west coast of Wales, I always say “If you’re not sure where Cardigan is, keep driving West until you get to the sea”.

In 2003 I started my undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at Oxford University. It was a masters degree, so it took 4 years.

I spent a summer doing a short project at the John Radcliff hospital in Oxford where I looked at a drug transporter that was involved in resistance in Malaria. I then did my Master’s degree in a Gene Therapy lab looking at proteins involved in Cystic Fibrosis. I stayed at Oxford University to do my PhD in arthritis research until 2011. After my PhD I was awarded a research fellowship at Cardiff University for 4 years, where I continued with arthritis research . Once I had my own children, I decided that I needed to move closer to my parents to have a more family oriented lifestyle.
Qualifications:

I gained 5A* and 7As in GCSE. My favourite subjects were obviously science and maths – I had amazing teachers for all of these subjects.

I chose Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Maths and French for A-level but only did French up to AS level so that I could focus on my sciences. I had As in all of these 🙂

I have a Masters degree in Biochemistry and I have a PhD in Clinical Medicine. So officially I’m a Doctor, but not a medical one. I will not be much help in a medical emergency…
Work History:

When I was doing A-levels and at Uni I worked in a Cafe and at WH Smiths.

I have tutored science throughout my PhD and even up to now I get asked to give the odd tutorial. I taught at a Summer School at Oxford and also taught Biochemistry undergraduates at Oxford University. I also lectured medical students at Cardiff University.

When I completed my Fellowship in 2015 I was offered a job teaching A-level Biology and A-level Chemistry at a private school in Cardiff. I taught at this school for just over 2 years. When I moved back to west Wales I taught A-level Biology, GCSE Chemistry and KS3 science at the school I used to attend for almost 2 years. It was really weird to teach at my old school! I missed the lab too much, and teaching with my own young kids at home was really hard work! I decided to take a job as a Senior Research Scientist at a local Pharmaceutical company. I am very happy working here.
Current Job:

I am a Senior Research Scientist at Aberystwyth University.

I work in the department of Life Sciences and I am responsible for my own project which looks at testing new anti-inflammatory treatments that might work to replace the over-use of antibiotics.

The Anti-microbial resistance crisis (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antimicrobial-resistance) is a really important and scary threat that leads to the development of “superbugs” like MRSA. It has come about because humans have over-used antibiotics over the years and now bacteria are evolving to become resistant to certain antibiotics.

Bugs are evolving quicker than we can find new drugs, so it’s a really important project.
Employer:

Aberystwyth University

https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/

My Interview
- How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
  
  Enthusiastic, friendly, conscientious
  
  What did you want to be after you left school?
  
  An Astronaut! But then I figured there were enough science mysteries on this planet to think about first!
  
  Were you ever in trouble at school?
  
  To be honest I was a bit of a geek, so…no.
  
  Who is your favourite singer or band?
  
  Sia
  
  What's your favourite food?
  
  Chocolate...
  
  If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
  
  When I was younger I always wished I had a remote control for life, so that I could freeze time or rewind or pause people! If I make an actual wish (when I blow my birthday candles out!) I always wish for my kids to be happy and healthy.... I guess my third wish would be to see Whales in their natural environment.
  
  Tell us a joke.
  
  What’s green and has wheels? Grass…I lied about the wheels