Profile

Working as Project Support Officer at The Genome Analysis Centre, my job involves a lot of chasing people and doing ‘project management’- if you’ve watched The Apprentice, I’m the one who holds the phone and shouts at people who can’t get me cheap cheese… except with science!

Many scientists are interested in finding out about the genes in the creatures they study, however this can be very difficult. If you wanted to read all the DNA bases in a person like a book, you’d need to read over 3,200,000,000 individual letters, and this would take you maybe 10 years. Thankfully, researchers building on the work of Fred Sanger have made very fancy machines that can read this is in under a day. And that is where I come in. Many scientists don’t have these machines, and this technology is evolving very quickly. The machines and skills needed cost a lot (more than most houses)! Everyday I receive a massive number of emails/calls from scientists all over the world, and we help them decide how would be best to do their experiment and if we can work with them to do it. We therefore have to keep up with the science (there’s more than any one person can know) and also do some ourselves to help make sure their experiments work and that they understand what we’ve done.

At university I studied Biological Sciences, I was really interested in learning about how and why people get diseases and what can be done about inherited diseases and cancer. I was very lucky to be offered work at The Genome Analysis Centre almost straight after I graduated, as this is a very exciting area of research and uses all of what I learned at university.

When I’m not working I will admit that I’m a bit of a geek and enjoy video games (Dark Souls at the moment is crazy) and seeing the random videos and images that appear online. I’m also into geocaching, and archery.

I also have a pet hamster called Peppa, she’s very cheeky.

I speak with many different scientists about experiments they have in mind, and if they want to pay us to do them or if they want to come visit and work with us as a collaboration. This involves many emails, and the first thing I do most mornings is check these, and how well the experiments we are doing are going and what we are doing is what the scientist needs- normally with a coffee and maybe a bacon butty.

For us to do the experiments, if it’s not something myself or someone else can do using our supercomputers, we will need to have samples sent to us to work on. I need to make sure we get these samples Ok and that they’re looked after correctly.

A lot of the work done in the lab, with robots and liquid, is something I ask our scientists to do. I make sure they understand what needs to be done for each experiment, and if there are any problems it’s my job to help solve these and talk with all the other scientists involved to fix them.

Once an experiment is complete, I have to make sure everything has been done right and makes sense, and give the results of the experiment to the scientist we’re working with. They can then use this information as part of their research to discover all sorts of things, like what makes a plant grow petals or why a naked mole rat is wrinkly.

My view of the back of Dave Baker’s head as he sets up his I’m a Scientist profile. He doesn’t know it yet, but I’m watching him…