• Question: what made you get into science?

    Asked by anon-213160 to Robert, Imad, Hannah, Fern, Christian, carolwallace on 10 Jun 2019. This question was also asked by anon-214198.
    • Photo: Robert Ives

      Robert Ives answered on 10 Jun 2019:

      I’ve always liked science and when I was younger, I wanted to work with animals. I had never considered working in a laboratory until I visited an animal facility and saw how well the animals were cared for. I realised that the people looking after them were animal lovers. This surprised me at the time – how can you work in an animal lab and love animals? But then I realised these were the best people to work there, because they were able to help improve the animals lives and make sure only the best science happened. I left school at 18 and started out as a technician in an animal unit and studied for my degree part time. As I learnt, I changed from a technician and turned into a scientist running my own experiments. Because of how I developed, animal welfare has always been a priority for me and I am very mindful of the work I do.

    • Photo: Carol Wallace

      Carol Wallace answered on 11 Jun 2019:

      I’ve always been interested in the why’s and what’s and what if’s.
      Science seemed to give real answers, even though it also raised many more questions and that’s what makes it so interesting.
      I’m sure everyone on the panel gets sucked into areas of science that they know nothing about, just because they’re curious.

    • Photo: Imad Ouachan

      Imad Ouachan answered on 11 Jun 2019:

      A love of asking question as to why things happen. Out of all the sciences I found chemistry to interest me the most as it explained some really fundamental questions!

    • Photo: Fern Johnson

      Fern Johnson answered on 12 Jun 2019:

      I was really curious about the world when I was little – I loved watching Steve Irwin, he was my hero! I was mainly interested in animals, so I liked biology best at school. I got more interested in the medical side of biology as I learned more about how the body works at GCSE and A-level. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go straight into healthcare and do medicine at university, but I wanted to keep my options open and learn about different areas of biology (medicine is a really competitive course, and I might not have got any offers either!). At university, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a scientist, I couldn’t find any fields that I was 100% certain about. Since leaving university I’ve done some different jobs, figured out I like working with computers and I like helping people – 5 years ago I didn’t even know what I could be a scientist in bioinformatics and genetics. In short it hasn’t been a straightforward journey for me.

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