• Question: What do you do as a scientist

    Asked by anon-349788 on 2 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Clara Zehe

      Clara Zehe answered on 2 Mar 2023:

      I am a chemist, so I work in a chemistry lab every day. I make carbon nanoparticles and do interesting experiments with them. When I am not in the lab, I am looking at data on my computer.
      Sometimes I get to visit other labs where I can do some extra cool, more complicated experiments.
      A few times a year, we also go to conferences around the world to talk to other scientists about our work and share new ideas.

    • Photo: Arno Kraft

      Arno Kraft answered on 2 Mar 2023:

      I am chemist, but don’t work in a lab. Most of my time is spent in front of a computer, making or revising new teaching material, or answering e-mails, or going through paperwork.

      There are some highlights during the day such as an occasional class – University teachers do much less teaching than school teachers 😃. Speaking to project students how they are getting on. Or just chatting to students that I encounter on the way to the coffee room 😃.

    • Photo: Rebecca Walker

      Rebecca Walker answered on 2 Mar 2023:

      In my job as a University Lecturer in Chemistry, I do a lot of different things: my job is split between teaching and research.

      I teach classes of university students from their first year through to their final year, and also some postgraduate courses – this could be lectures, small group practical sessions in the lab or tutorial/Q&A sessions to help them study.

      My research involves a mix of different types of chemistry – I specialise in ‘liquid crystals’, which you might be more familiar with in ‘LCDs’ or ‘liquid crystal displays’, like your phone or TV screen. I work in organic chemistry, making new molecules that could go on to be included as part of the display device, but first I need to look at their fundamental properties and see if they would actually be useful: do they work at the right temperature? are they the right ‘type’ of liquid crystal to be included in a display? do they response to electricity correctly? etc.

    • Photo: Maryam Sani

      Maryam Sani answered on 2 Mar 2023:

      As a scientist, I worked as an analytical chemist. One of my main roles was testing samples of malt over different periods of time to determine the nitrogen content.
      Scientists can have many different roles but they all involve some form of problem-solving by analysing the results of experiments. Do you know the scientific method? Scientists apply the scientific method in most of their work.

    • Photo: Grace Roper

      Grace Roper answered on 6 Mar 2023:

      I am a ‘chemical biologist’ – which means I do a mixture of Chemistry and Biology. My research is closely related to drug discovery, and I develop molecules which can be used to modulate a protein of interest. This allows us to find out more about the protein, and whether it would a good drug target.
      Day-to-day I do a lot of experiments/analysis related to both making and testing the molecules in the lab.

    • Photo: Jo Ellis

      Jo Ellis answered on 6 Mar 2023:

      In my current job I solve all sorts of problems by researching the best way to do different things. This involves applying lots of scientific thinking.

    • Photo: Layla Alnoumas

      Layla Alnoumas answered on 8 Mar 2023:

      As a scientist, I perform experiments on different types of breast cancer cells and test their cell survival response to anti-cancer medicines. The more we understand about it the more we help in potential medicine targets, aiming for personalised medicine selection in future.

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