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Asked by louistaylor1 to Emma, Jen, Joseph, Michael, Mona on 16 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by liam1997.
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Michael Taggart answered on 14 Jun 2011:
I’m based in the Institue of cellular Medicine, Newcastle University in the north east of England (www.ncl.ac.uk/icm).
I spend much of the day writing about science, preparing requests for research funding or writing papers about our research data to submit to scentific journals, and also discussing with lab members the experiments that they are performing.
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Mona Gharaie answered on 14 Jun 2011:
I’m based in the Centre for Process Integration. We are part of the school of chamical engineering and analytical science at the Univerity of Manchester. I spend my day reading about my subject and try to find a better solution.
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Jen Gupta answered on 14 Jun 2011:
I’m based at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (www.jb.man.ac.uk) which is part of The University of Manchester. Most of my time I spend in Manchester but I sometimes escape to the Jodrell Bank Observatory which is in Cheshire and is home to the huge Lovell radio telescope.
Most of my time is spent in front of a computer looking at information from telescopes to try to understand the physics behind the active galaxies that I study. Sometimes I use special computer programs to make pictures using the data from the telescopes, other times I write my own programs to analyse the information. The rest of my time is spent writing about what I find (I have to write a really long report called a thesis which will be examined for me to get my PhD) or reading reports that other people have written about their research so that I know what else is going on in my field. Sometimes I go to conferences which are big meetings of people who do similar research to me and I give a presentation about my work, sometimes I go to workshops so that I can learn how to analyse data from telescopes, sometimes I might go to a telescope to take observations. Not part of my job as such but I also help to make a podcast about astronomy and spend quite a bit of time talking to the public (people like you!) about astronomy and my work and thinking of better ways to do this.
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Emma Bennett answered on 16 Jun 2011:
I’m based at the University of Reading but for field trials I get to escape to other sites which is great. Day to day my job is quite varied, but it generally involves doing some lab work (even if it’s only for 10 minutes) which could be anything from counting seeds to running samples though a machine called a GC to look at the oil content of seeds. I try to look at the plants I’m growing every day as it’s the best way to see what’s happening and if they are still nice and happy. Part of my job involves dreaded admin and at some point I have to find time to look over the data collected to see if anything has worked. On top of all this I get to read articles that other scientists have published to see what they are up to.
Comments
cobaltzone commented on :
Are you a completely hands off the ‘wet work’ experiments then Michael? Do you just organise others to do the experiments you think up and request funding for?
Michael commented on :
Frustratingly, mostly so but not quite entirely. I still help out on the ‘wet experiments’ generally at the beginning of a project – teaching an established technique to a new lab member or helping optimise a new technique or fandangled piece of microspcopy equipment.