Profile

I’m originally from Sheffield, a very hilly city about 2 hours drive from here. I moved to Newcastle nearly 2 years ago and love it here! I’m lucky to live with two brilliant friends who make me laugh and support me. I love swimming, and as the weather gets a bit warmer I even like to take a dip in the sea sometimes (with a wetsuit on!). I used to play netball for a while, which was great fun, I miss doing that now! I like to rock climb, but indoors where it’s nice and warm and dry! I also adore video games, my favourites are the Legend of Zelda and racing on Mariokart with my friends. I’m always listening to music, and I learned to play the flute in school, but my singing is best confined to the shower.

There are some horrible diseases in the world, but the good news is that we have lots of brilliant medicines which we can use to fight them! Some medicines we use to fight cancer have been invented for about 60 years and are still very useful today. However, these medicines do have side effects – this means that they can have effects on people separate from the illness we’re trying to fix. The fancy word for this area of research is toxicology! For a small number of people, cancer-fighting medicines can make their hearts poorly a long time (years and years!) after they finish taking their medicines. I try to understand why this happens, and what we can do to help these patients!

I wake up at about 7:30 am. I usually have porridge for breakfast, give my chilli plant a drink of water, then I get the bus to work, arriving at about 9:00 am.

Usually, I try to do experiments in the lab in the morning, because my brain is nice and awake for lots of concentration and tricky challenges. These are often really fiddly tasks where I need a steady hand – a bit like playing the game Operation. I usually have to stop for a snack at around 11am, I get hungry again really quickly after breakfast! I’ll go back to the lab for a bit, then I have lunch and a cup of tea around 12:30pm before starting work again.

In the afternoon, I might do more lab work or I might do some other things – my job has lots of different parts to it other than lab experiments. I might have look at my experiment results, and try to figure out what they mean. I might also have meetings with other people and discuss my work – I am lucky to work with lots of different people and it’s very helpful to hear their ideas. Some of them are in this picture: they’re all lovely and very clever!

I might have a think about future experiments, and try to plan ahead. I usually finish work at about 5:30pm.