Profile

I live with my wife in Nottingham. We’ve been married 2 years. We met in Leeds on New Year’s Eve. We spent a long time living in Leeds and own a flat there together. I play a couple of instruments and used to make music. I once had one of my songs played on BBC Radio. I sometimes play Xbox against my brother. I’m much better than him. He doesn’t agree.

Tinnitus is a really common symptom where people hear noises that don’t have a source in the real world. This can be a little like hearing a car alarm constantly, but there’s no car outside…

Some research suggests that people who have tinnitus might not perform as well on tasks that require certain kinds of concentration. This could be because their attention is being partly stolen by the tinnitus. The problem is, there are lots of different kinds of people with tinnitus and probably lots of different kinds of tinnitus. This means that the current scientific evidence is mixed.

My work involves pulling together all of the available scientific information on this problem and “systematically reviewing” it. This basically means taking a very hard look at the evidence to see what it’s really telling us.

Researching things for a PhD doesn’t have a typical ‘standard day’, but I’ll certainly spend a reasonable amount of time doing lots of things that most people do at work (like sending emails) – this is unavoidable!

However, the great thing about doing a PhD is that the rest of the time is yours to manage, so you can spend your time doing a lot of different activities. For me, this often includes reading, planning research, discussing ideas with colleagues and making coffee.

I would use the prize money to commision an application that demonstrated how distracting tinnitus may be when performing a cognitive task. This would require users to select their most ‘distressing’ artificial tinnitus sound, then ask them to complete an established task from cognitive psychology, such as a Stroop task (if you’d like to know what this is, ask me during the interactive chat and you’ll see something cool!).

While not intended to be scientifically accurate and demonstrative of the potential impact of tinnitus and cognition, I believe that this could help to raise awareness of the wider impact that tinnitus could have on a person’s day to day life. The app would also include information and links to helping third-sector organisations such as the British Tinnitus Association and British Society of Audiology (BSA) where people can learn more about the impact and science of tinnitus.