• Question: What is or was your biggest invention that helped the world and how long did it take?

    Asked by 857bsmf33 to Ellen, Elliot, Hazel, Rupesh, Thomas on 13 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Elliot Jokl

      Elliot Jokl answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      Thanks for the question!

      Honestly? I haven’t really invented much yet! I have made some mutant fish and mutant cells which might help us figure out something important about how muscles grow. And maybe in the future the things we figure out might work towards developing a cure or a therapy for muscle disease. But that is a long way off.

      I think it is useful to think about science having several phases. I am kind of on the first phase of looking at something that has gone wrong and trying to figure out what is going on. The next phase would be someone looking at how to fix the problem now that we know what is happening. The phase after that would be figuring out who needs the problem to be fixed and if it is safe to fix it in the way we think it works.

      So I hope that the work I do will inspire someone else to invent something to fix the problems I figure out, but I’m not sure whether I will be the person to do that directly!

    • Photo: Thomas Biggans

      Thomas Biggans answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      Like Elliot says inventing something is a process which has several steps and takes many people working together. This process can take several years depending on the invention.

      In the past I’ve done some work with a new type of MRI scanner. This new scanner is different because instead of using just one magnetic field strength like the ones that are in hospitals just now it uses loads of different magnetic field strengths. This new scanner changes between the different strengths really quickly so we call it fast field cycling MRI.

      Although we’ve been working on these scanners for some time they’re still at the experimental stage meaning the only full body one that exists was homemade by us. But once we’ve proving the concept companies will get involved and develop these homemade scanners into scanners that can be used in the hospital. But this will take several more years and then we’ve got to convince the hospital to buy one.

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