Question: What did you first make as a scientist?

Carolyn Nielsen answered on 17 Nov 2015:

So a lot of biological scientists, like me, don’t make things exactly but more set up experiments to understand how things in the living world work. For example, the research that I am doing now involves taking 50ml blood samples from healthy adults, of a range of ages, and then testing their immune cells to see how well they respond to vaccines.

This is quite different from the experiments I did when I was just starting out with science after school though! I worked at a horticultural research centre for a summer job and spent a lot of time harvesting plants to store the seeds. Then when I was doing my undergraduate degree I ended up working part-time in my final year in plant genetics lab where I was helping breed new species… this was all good experience, even if I had no desire to end up as a plant scientist!