Profile

I grew up in Jersey in the Channel Islands, and moved to the UK for University. I played a lot of sport growing up and at university, but mostly football. Other than football, my favourite sport is cricket, but I was never very good at it so I prefer to listen to commentary and watch games at nearby stadiums in the summer months. I’m a HUGE music fan and have been teaching myself to play the guitar for several years (its been a slow process!)

My favourite movie is Interstellar and my favourite book I’ve read recently was Solaris by Stanislaw Lem.

I try to find time to run and I’m aiming to run a marathon in the next year.

Membranes form different compartments, called organelles, within all our cells. Membranes are made up of mixtures of molecules called lipids, and there are LOTS of different types of lipid. But the type of lipid and number of each type of lipid can change what a membrane looks like and how it behaves; these change the ‘identity’ of a membrane.

When a cell is stressed (e.g. due to drugs, environmental factors), membranes can also be damaged, as the wrong kind of lipids can get made or get stuck in the wrong place. This stops our membranes and organelles from working properly, leading to disease such as cancer and neurodegeneration (damage to brain cells). I study how cells detect damage to these membranes, and what cells can do to fix any damage. I’m also really interested in whether we can help cells fix problems, as this could tell us more about how to treat different diseases!

I get up around 7.30-8am. I usually have a tea and a bagel for breakfast before heading to the lab. I usually aim to arrive between 9.30 and 10am, and I like to walk there if I have time. The first thing I do every day is to look at the cells I’m growing in special incubators. I like to know they’re healthy and happily growing before I do anything else. I also like to check in with any undergraduate and Masters students in the lab, to see if they need any help.

I do experiments before lunch. Lots of my experiments involve staining cells so I can see them down a microscope, so I organise my day so I can do stuff in the gaps, such as reading scientific papers. I usually have lunch at 1pm, either with friends or on my own so I can listen to a podcast. After lunch I’ll reply to emails, analyse data from the previous experiment and read an interesting scientific paper I’ve found. In the afternoon, I’ll continue my experiments and go to the microscope. The microscopes I use can magnify a cell by 1000x, as they’re far too small to see otherwise. This way I can see different structures in a cell and look where different proteins are, so I collect most of my data this way. I go home around 6pm.