• Question: What experiment got you discovered as a respected scientist?

    Asked by anon-290097 to Ellen, David on 23 Mar 2021.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 23 Mar 2021:

      Hi,
      I don’t think I have become a proper respected scientist yet! But I will share with you the first experiment I did that got me some attention from other scientists.
      There is something called ‘circadian rhythm’ which essentially means our body fluctuates in 24 hour cycle (hence 24 hours in a day!) and this can impact temperature during the morning or evening. Almost all of the research pointed that these rhythms and associated temperature will effect cognition (memory, attention, concentration etc.) so I thought I would try this out myself!
      I used data from A-level exams for nearly 350,000 papers in the UK! I did some analysis to see if sitting the exams in the morning or afternoon would effect scores – but my super larger study showed otherwise!
      I was also quite proud that I did this study by myself in my second year at university.

    • Photo: Ellen Smith

      Ellen Smith answered on 24 Mar 2021:

      I don’t think I’ve achieved that yet! I’m still very early on in my career and will finish my PhD later this year. So far I’d say getting my masters research project published in a scientific journal is my greatest achievement and made me feel most like an actual scientist! I definitely hope to get more work published from my PhD this year though.

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