Profile

I’m Leo, a 26 year old scientist living in London.

Interests (outside of science!)

I do a lot of juggling and circus related things, I go to two juggling clubs where I hang out with other keen jugglers, diabolists, unicyclists. They’re very casual social events, but I try to work to improve and learn a new trick every now and then.

I’m also a big cricket fan, I like to go and watch games during the summer and also play as part of a team. We all admit we’re not actually very good at cricket, but we’re all enthusiastic and have fun anyway. We play friendly matches against other teams around London – most of which we lose – but it’s the taking part that counts right?

The rest of my time I spend watching TV, movies, listening to music, reading and most importantly spending time with friends and family.

Infectious diseases, or “bugs” spread from person to person (like the common cold). Often when one person gets a bug and gets ill, some of their friends and family get sick too. Scientists like myself try to find mathematical equations to work out how many people will get sick and how quickly a bug will spread. This helps to find ways to stop bugs from spreading and preventing people from getting sick.

I often start the day by reading some of the latest science news and research. I’ll then make a cup of tea and make a plan for the rest of the day.

Coding – My work is almost all done on a computer. This normally involves making some changes to the computer code that I use to answer my research questions. Often when programming, I’ll have made some mistakes (this is really common!) so the program produces some strange results and I’ll have to try to figure out where the mistake in the code is. Sometimes this can be easy but occasionally it’s painfully slow! When things are working properly I’ll get the results of my work and try to make them easy to understand so I’ll make graphs and charts to help explain my work to other people.

Writing – In my job it’s important to publish your work in scientific journals so that other people can read about your research. This can help other scientists with their own research. I’ll spend some of my time writing my work, getting it ready to send to a scientific journal, trying to make sure that it’s clear and easy to understand.

Presenting – Sometime I’ll go to a meeting to present my work to other scientists.  Before the meeting I’ll spend some time making a presentation in Powerpoint, and practice saying the presentation out loud to make sure I can explain everything easily.