Profile

I am originally from Peterborough, but moved to Nottingham to complete my microbiology degree, one thing led to another and I ended up becoming a PhD student. I don’t think there are many foods in the world where I would not eat with the amount I eat its fortunate I’m also a fitness nut. In my spare time I partake in some Chinese tea ceremony, which involves different types of green teas that are brewed in different temperatures at different times.

There are some bacteria in the world, which have evolved to be very successful at infecting their hosts. One such bacterial species being mycobacterium, TB for example has evolved to be very good at infecting and persisting in humans. Other species of mycobacteria have also evolved to be successful at chronically infecting their corresponding hosts. This has unfortunately, become an issue in the medical and veterinary fields.

Novel ideas have been put forward to combat this issue, one of these novel ideas is utilising bacterial viruses to diagnose and/or treat bacterial infections. Viruses that predate on bacteria are known as bacteriophages and there are trillions of them in the world. One specific phage I work on is D29 and it specialises in going after quite a broad range of mycobacteria. However, that’s as much as we know and my work is to find out more about how they interact.

Breakfast aside I get into the lab in the mornings and begin to mentally plan my week and the experiments I will need to do. A lot of preparation is usually handled first, in particular setting up bacterial cultures, which depending on the organism you work with can take hours or days. Unfortunately, the microorganism I work with, it takes at least 24 hours to grow them (One species takes 6 weeks minimum!). I would say typically most my days involve planning and preparing (taking up about 60% of my time) and then executing experiments (20% of my time) then finally collecting and analysing results (20% of time).

There is no set routine that I work on but it evolves to my research needs, its more mini project based. Where I will have a question related to my research, ask that question and then can I answer said question with the tools I have available to me in the lab, answer the question and move on to the next. Eventually a story is built and that becomes my thesis (the massive science novel that every PhD student has to write at the end).