Profile
Oyin Olotu
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About Me:
🙋🏾♀️My name is Oyin and I am Nigerian and Scottish. I moved to Scotland when I was 7 and lived there for most of my life. I am a Food Research student in Reading 🍴👩🏾🔬 .
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When I was younger, I enjoyed watching cooking shows and baking a lot. I’d bake meringues, quiches and muffins🍳🧁.
I love singing, drawing and hanging out with my friends🎤🎨. I once drew a children’s book.
I lived in Romania (Bucharest) for a little while and loved it there☀️!
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My pronouns are:
she/her
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My Work:
My work is about finding ways to get people to eat more beans because we don’t eat enough in the UK🫘🍽️.
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This was my team and me when we were working on chickpeas (it’s what hummus is made from if you know that). We fed people chickpeas for 3 or 4 days and we measured the effects on their body👩🏾⚕️.
Now, I am a student at the University of Reading and I am working on beans (broad beans)🫘.
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My Typical Day:
I wake up, pray and read my bible. I get to work around 9/10 am, where I work at my desk and read interesting papers about food and what other people have found📖. Other times, I might be in the kitchen preparing chickpeas for our trial or I could be in the lab preparing for our experiments🧪. I usually have lunch and do some more reading and writing. I have a few meetings with my supervisor (kind of like a teacher) and then I go home around 6 pm.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I would use the prize money to organise a visit of students to the tropical greenhouse or the Clinical Simulation Suite at Uni of Reading
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Education:
I went to primary school in Nigeria then I went to primary school in Aberdeen Scotland. In primary school, English was my favourite subject and I didn’t like maths.
I went to secondary school in Aberdeen, Romania and Edinburgh.
In secondary school, My friends were really smart and hard-working. They inspired me and I worked really hard to get better at maths. I ended up enjoying it a lot and getting an A in GCSE. I enjoyed science subjects the most but I also tried out other subjects like art.
I found biology captivating and I was good at it too. I went to the University of Aberdeen for my first degree in Physiology which is basically how the body works. It combined everything I had learnt in school.
My second degree called a Master’s focused on Food and it was about Clinical Trials. Clinical trials are when scientists test new drugs or foods to see their effects. If it is good, it can be sold to people to help them.
Now, I am doing my third degree called a PhD (which stands for Doctor of Philosophy, kind of like a “Doctor of Thinking” because you get called Doctor once you’ve finished your degree). My PhD is about beans and how they affect health.
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Qualifications:
GCSEs in English, Maths, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geography, French, Art,
A-level in Biology, Chemistry and Maths
Bachelor of Science in Physiology
Master of Research in Clinical Research (Diabetes and Obesity)
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Work History:
Catering Assistant at Sodexo
Sales Assistant at Lovisa
Summer Research Intern at Aberdeen University
Sales Assistant at Dunelm
COVID-19 Track and Trace Agent
Summer Research Intern at Cambridge University
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Employer:
University of Reading
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My Interview
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What did you want to be after you left school?
I wanted to be a medical doctor
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Not really, I was only noisy with my friends
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
I would choose to be an illustrator or a computer scientist
What's your favourite food?
Jollof Rice because it is spicy and comforting
Tell us a joke.
How do you make an octopus laugh?.... With ten-tickles
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