Profile
Stuart Clare
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About Me:
I live in Oxford, and when not doing medical research I support our local swimming club as a timekeeper and official.
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My pronouns are:
he/him
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My Work:
I’m a physicist working in medical research. My research is about how to take the best quality pictures inside the living human brain, using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).
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Read more
To learn about how the brain works and what is happening when things go wrong, it is really helpful to see inside. One way to do this is to use an MRI scanner, a machine that uses a very strong magnet to take scans inside the living brain.
I’m really privileged to work with some amazing doctors, psychologists, and other scientists to help them get the very best quality pictures of what the brain looks like, and how it works.
As a physicist, I bring my knowledge of how MRI works to make the scans faster, sharper, more detailed or with more information that could be useful to other scientists.
Over my years being a physicist in a medical research centre, I have learnt so much about human biology and psychology from those that I have worked with. Hopefully they have learnt a bit of physics from me!
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My Typical Day:
A typical day will be a mix of meetings with the staff or students I supervise, meetings with other medical researchers about the things that they want to do on the MRI scanner, and time spent at the computer looking at images or other data.
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Education:
I grew up in a village in South Buckinghamshire right next to Pinewood Studios, where films like James Bond were made and went to a state school a few miles away. I didn’t find school that easy – especially before sixth form. In the first year of secondary school I was almost bottom of the class.
I didn’t like biology at all (and dropped it for GCSE – in the days when you didn’t have to do all sciences!) and preferred Chemistry to Physics. A lot of that was due to the teachers though and as I got to A-Levels I started to enjoy school and science a lot more.
I did really enjoy working backstage on school productions and also in the local village theatre group and thought I might be a theatre technician (a job my brother now does!)
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Qualifications:
My GCSE results weren’t amazing – I got a ‘B’ in physics, which goes to show that you don’t have to have top grades at the start to go on to be successful in something. My favourite GCSEs were Business Studies and Chemistry.
I did A-levels in Physics, Chemistry and Maths. When I started looking at university, I thought I might study Pharmacy, but my lack of Biology GCSE was a problem for that and for some reason I studied Physics instead.
I did a Physics degree at Nottingham University, which was the department where MRI was invented, so when I was looking for the next steps, doing a PhD in MRI in Nottingham was a natural choice. This meant I ended up in biomedical research, without having a Biology GCSE.
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Work History:
Nottingham had the first ‘high-field’ MRI scanner in the UK, that I worked on programming and using for brain research. While I was in Nottingham, scientists in Oxford were planning to be the second site for a high-field MRI scanner, so I helped them out and ended up taking a job there after my PhD.
When I started in Oxford there were around 10 researchers in total in our research centre. Now we have around 350.
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Employer:
I am employed by Oxford University as an Associate Professor and Director of Operations for the brain imaging research centre.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Brain Scanning Physicist
What did you want to be after you left school?
Theatre technician
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Not really
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
Support people with their money management
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Elbow
What's your favourite food?
Steak pie and mash
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
Have a happy family. Make an impact with my science. Meet interesting people.
Tell us a joke.
Why can't a brain be 12 inches long? Because then it would be a foot!
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