• Question: how did you get into working in this field?

    Asked by nope12 to Liza, Leo, Daniel on 4 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Liza Selley

      Liza Selley answered on 4 Jun 2018:

      When I started uni I wanted to be a forensic scientist but I was also interested in other areas of biology. We could only pick two subjects out of three for our lessons so I decided to get some work experience in the third subject instead.

      I had an absolutely fantastic summer working in a microbiology lab (where scientists study bacteria and other germs). It was a real research project (nobody knew the answers to the experiments yet) and I fell in love with the idea of being able to design my own experiments and ask my own questions. I have included some aspects of forensics in my work…toxicology (the study of how chemicals like air pollution affect the body) uses lots of the same approaches as drug testing or poison analysis- but I am glad that I opened my mind to other possibilities. Science is great for this – its amazing how many different types of experiments you can put together to create a project!

    • Photo: Daniel Rhodes

      Daniel Rhodes answered on 5 Jun 2018:

      So I originally trained as a biomedical scientist, but when doing my masters I thought I’d have a go at bioinformatics. I really enjoyed programming and liked the sorts of questions you could ask of data. I then set about looking for a PhD, and after quite a bit of searching found a project that I really liked the look of. I want to work in industry when I finish my PhD, for a biotechnology or pharmaceutical company, so I thought focusing on an area of drug discovery would be helpful for this.

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