• Question: How did you become a research scientist?

    Asked by giraffe15 to Cat?, Elaine, Helena, Iain, Gabriel on 7 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Iain McLellan

      Iain McLellan answered on 7 Mar 2016:

      I became a research scientist when I was finishing my Honours Degree – I was asked to become a lab assistant on a big European project and I really liked it. I then applied to do a PhD in land contamination and my love of research grew from that

    • Photo: Helena Quilter

      Helena Quilter answered on 7 Mar 2016:

      It took me a while to decide I wanted to do research. When I finished my degree at university I wanted to go out and get a job so I went to work at a chemical waste factory. That was really not very glamorous – I used to work outside in overalls and a hard hat in all weathers (rain, sun, snow, you name it!) – but it was really interesting because I never really thought about where all our waste chemicals go before. While I worked there I decided that I wanted to go into researching how to make things without making so much waste that can be bad for the planet. I decided to go back to university to study for another degree to be a research scientist – and that’s where I am now!

    • Photo: Cat Scott ?

      Cat Scott ? answered on 7 Mar 2016:

      I really liked science at school so I picked Chemistry, Physics and Maths for my A-levels, then I went to University and studied Chemistry. When I was at University we had to do a lot of experiments in the lab but I was very clumsy, I kept dropping things and breaking them! I thought maybe I wouldn’t be able to be a scientist after all…… But then I found out that you can do science experiments on the computer using programming, which is how I do my research now.

      I still have to be careful not to break my computer though….. 🙂

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