• Question: What was your dream job, childhood dream, how has it changed over time???

    Asked by anon-251343 to Arun on 27 Apr 2020.
    • Photo: Arun Prasad Pandurangan

      Arun Prasad Pandurangan answered on 27 Apr 2020:

      My childhood dream was to become a Scientist in a broad fashion as I was inspired by my Dad who was a Mathematician and Uncle is a food chemist. I knew that I have to somehow be in the area of Science. But my interest in Science evolved over the period of time before I settled into my current interest in Computational Biology. Initially, I wanted to become an Astrophysicist and I guess that was based on the excitement around space research and rockets science when I was growing up. Then my interested started to focus into Physics during my A-levels but decided to take up Computer Science degree (Bachelors and Masters) and finally ended up pursuing PhD in Computation Biology – an interdisciplinary subject involving computers, physics, chemistry and biology. Looking back, I realise that even though I took different turns in my career, I kept the over all goal to become a Scientist and now very much appreciate its interdisciplinary nature!

Comments

  • Photo: anon-251343

    anon-251343 commented on :

    Thanks for your reply, it’s amazing to see how your childhood dream to take on a career in the field of science was maintained. Thank you for answering my question!! 😊😊

  • Photo: Tom

    Tom commented on :

    I wanted to build boats! I slowly realised that I find designing almost anything just as fun, so it doesn’t matter what industry I work in (as so far I have worked in 3).

    I’d still like to design boats, or maybe build them as a hobby.

  • Photo: Donna

    Donna commented on :

    My childhood dream was to be a vet… then I thought about being a teacher… then I discovered that I love research – asking questions and finding answers that no-one knows yet! Now my job does all three things – I use some animal models in my research, I teach students about microbiology and how to do research and I have students carrying out research (sometimes even I get into the lab!)

  • Photo: Catriona

    Catriona commented on :

    Right up until I was 18, I desperately wanted to be a vet. I had offers to universities but then I made a mess of my final year exams in high school so couldn’t go. I took a year out then started a biological sciences degree but I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do afterwards. In the summer holidays after my second year, I interned at a research company and this helped me decide that I wanted to go into research. Once I’d worked out exactly what I found most interesting, I specialised my degree into immunology and cancer biology. I didn’t go for a PhD straight away as I hadn’t found a project that was exactly what I wanted to do, but just before graduation one popped up that was ideal so I applied, was accepted and that’s where I am now