• Question: How would you say your work benefits others?

    Asked by Yaz to Thomas, Ruhina on 15 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Tang.
    • Photo: Ruhina Miller

      Ruhina Miller answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      If we have an understanding of why products such as shampoos freeze when the weather is cold, we can hopefully prevent this so when you buy such items and live in a cold country, you aren’t disappointed because it doesn’t look or work how you want it to :).

    • Photo: Thomas Farrugia

      Thomas Farrugia answered on 22 Jun 2015:

      Hi Yaz and Tang – I don’t think there are direct benefits from my research at the moment, although in the near future I’d hope tha tit might allow for a different approach to chemical reactions – we could coat objects/materials (think lollypop sticks) with films made out of enzymes and then use those to carry out chemical reactions. Want to change the reaction ? Just remove the stick and put another one in.

      Some research is very blue sky, so keep in mind too – sometimes we tend to think of applications, but in reality some science is done purely to understand a system, or because the scientist carrying out the research is really excited by the idea because it’s never been done before. It’s a bit like the reply George Mallory gave when he was asked “Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?”.

      “Because it’s there.”

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