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Asked by anon-208723 to Stuart, Tori, Titus, Hannah, Gill, Alessandro on 5 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by anon-208430.
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Stuart Higgins answered on 5 Mar 2019:
In my current work it’s a mixture of both. So you can use the spiky surfaces I make to inject medicines directly into cells, and you can also use them to study how cells behave when they are on them.
The first part is useful to humans because you could use it to inject medicines into injured parts of the body (for example during an operation), to help it heal.
The second part is more basic understanding of the world. It might help later on with something practical (for example the way cancer cells move around the body is linked to it), but for now it’s still trying to understand the basics.
Generally I think science should be a mix of both, when they invented the laser, they had no idea what to use it for, now it’s essential for making the internet work, loads of stuff.
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Hannah Dalgleish answered on 5 Mar 2019:
I agree with Stuart, it’s definitely both! Without astronomy and space missions we wouldn’t have the internet or GPS. A lot of science is done in the name of progress, but there are often many more applications for it that the ‘inventor’ had never even thought of.
It can also go wrong as well. When Oppenheimer discovered the means to create the atomic bomb, that was never his intention. He quoted “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
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Gill Harrison answered on 6 Mar 2019:
I guess most of my work is benefiting people directly.
I have taught some students who have gone on to undertake more research than I do, so if I can inspire them to do that, I guess there’s a bit of both.
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