• Question: What has been your proudest moment doing the work that you are doing right now and if you could change one thing about your job, what would it be and why?

    Asked by jade to Shuo, Neil, Martin, Lauren, Ciorsdaidh, Alan on 15 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 15 Mar 2018:


      I think my proudest moments were when my first PhD student got himself a university lectureship and more recently when my first post-doctoral research assistant made it to Professor!

      If I could change something it would be to get rid of all the administration I have to do…

    • Photo: Lauren Webster

      Lauren Webster answered on 15 Mar 2018:


      My proudest moment was and still is, seeing all my students progress. Watching them come into our place of work and incorporate themselves into our lives and our way of working. It is a privilege teaching individuals who are so keen to learn and to watch them do so is very rewarding 🙂

    • Photo: Neil Keddie

      Neil Keddie answered on 15 Mar 2018:


      I think my proudest moment was when I got a piece of research work published that I had been working on for the previous 5 years. It had been a real uphill struggle and we nearly gave up a number of times, but I kept going back to it to try new things and work out new ways to tackle the problems we had. In the end, I found a new way of making the molecules that hadn’t been done before, and that let us to our final goal. I got to publish this work in a really well respected journal, and it got lots of people across the world talking about it – I even got the front cover of the journal!

      If there is one thing I could change about my job… I’d try and get rid of the admin too, so I could spend more time in the lab researching and more time just to teach.

    • Photo: Alan McCue

      Alan McCue answered on 15 Mar 2018:


      Yesterday I had a piece or research accepted in a really god scientific journal so I was chuffed at that. I suppose if I could change one things about my role as a scientist…. I’d make science cheaper as too often money restricts our ability to try good experiments!

    • Photo: Ciorsdaidh Watts

      Ciorsdaidh Watts answered on 16 Mar 2018:


      Great questions! My proudest moment has been designing and making a new compound which inhibits a protein that is involved in cancer development. That was special! If I could change one thing about my job, I’d travel to foreign countries and experience their cultures more (but I’m happy with the trade-off).

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