• Question: What is the greatest part of your job? What made you decide to go forwards into that specific field and not anything else?

    Asked by duke499had on 30 Apr 2024. This question was also asked by laceys.
    • Photo: Emma Weir

      Emma Weir answered on 30 Apr 2024:


      In my job I get to spend a lot of time in the lab doing experiments which is my favourite part. I particularly like cell culture which is when we grow cells including brain cells and mini brain models. It’s so cool to see a cell go from being a stem cell to a neuron that can fire real signals.

      I knew I liked neuroscience and cell biology, and those are the things that led me to my current project, and made me want to study a PhD in the field 😊

    • Photo: Zoe Vance

      Zoe Vance answered on 30 Apr 2024:


      I think the best part of my job is getting to find out new things every day – you might never make a massive groundbreaking discovery but you are adding to our knowledge of the world most days and I just think that’s so cool. I think I ended up in this field because I always liked biology the best of all the sciences (though physics did nearly get me when I was picking my degree). It just feels so much more chaotic than the others – there are very few concrete laws in biology because living things can be so difficult to predict and need to be quite flexible just by the nature of living and surviving in a changing environment. I ended up in evolution specifically for a similar reason, the weird adaptations some organisms have to their environment and trying to trace back how and why they happened was always really interesting to me.

    • Photo: Samet Sahin

      Samet Sahin answered on 24 Jun 2024:


      I think it is freedom. I like the fact that I am free to research anything I am curious about and genuinely interested in. Of course, this also involves training myself if I don’t feel competent enough about the topic. But, the reality is nothing stops me from doing what I want to do. I am driving my research interests and how I want to contribute to the world.

    • Photo: Michael Schubert

      Michael Schubert answered on 27 Jun 2024:


      I love the variety in my job! I get to learn about all different fields of science, work on different things every day, and meet all kinds of people. I’ve had the opportunity to travel to interesting locations and do things most people would never think of. I’m sometimes one of the first people in the world to learn a new thing – and then I get to help other people learn about it, too, and see how amazed they are when it fits into their idea of the world like a puzzle piece. Those are the greatest parts of my job and they make me excited to do the work I do every day.

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