Profile

I live near London with my partner – we got locked down together last March after only being together for one month! But a year later, everything is going very well!

We love to explore new places and be outdoors – hopefully one day we’ll get a dog to take on our walks too. I’ve never had a pet!

I can’t wait to go travelling again when lockdown is over – I have been saving to travel to Japan. I’ve heard it’s an incredibly beautiful place.

I got my chemistry degree at the University of Durham, in the north. In my degree I did a placement year at GSK, and loved it, so decided to stay here for my PhD.

My favourite foods are peanut butter and gooey chocolate brownie with ice cream. I play the flute and I’m currently trying to get into photography. If you have any tips, please let me know!

Disease happens when proteins in the body misbehave. Diseases can sometimes be cured by taking medicines, which help the proteins to function normally. However, it is difficult to find the correct medicine for the right protein. My work helps to find new medicines that may be able to treat diseases, which is a very difficult task!

Because I work at a big company, I have to keep a lot of my work a secret, but I get to:

• Make new chemicals by mixing other chemicals together
• Purify these chemicals using some fancy techniques
• Analyse these chemicals to make sure I’ve made the right one!
• Put the chemicals I’ve made into proteins and cells
• See how the chemicals affect the proteins and cells (my favourite part)

My favourite machine that I use transfers tiny amounts of liquid using sound waves! Sometimes the droplets are so small you can’t see them!

Normal day in the lab:
– I get up at about 7 o’clock, and get ready, then head to work.
– I sit down in the office and take a look at my plan for the day, including any meetings that I have that may interrupt my lab work
– I go into the lab!
– I get a couple of chemistry reactions on. First, I write what I will do on in a special lab notebook on my laptop. Then, I set up all the equipment, weigh out all the chemicals I’ll need, and start mixing and heating them.
– I might take a break, then have a team meeting where we discuss science.
– In the afternoon, I would put a biological experiment on, where I defrost some protein (it’s stored at minus 80 degrees!). Then I add my chemicals to the protein and use a machine to monitor how they interact.
– Later on, I analyse some of my results, so that I can plan my experiments for the next day or two.