Question: What Inspired to go down the path your going down now?

Neil Keddie answered on 13 Mar 2018:

That’s a good question! When I was at school, I was really interested in the oceans and I did a lot of scuba diving at that time too. I had aspirations of being a marine biologist or an oceanographer – basically jobs involving science (my favourite subjects at school) and the sea. My chemistry teacher and my careers advisor recommended that I take a pure science at uni first, as it would give me more options to diversify what I did later, then do a postgraduate degree in Oceanography – so I went to study Chemistry at uni.

I really like Chemistry as a subject, and spent a year working for a drug company during my degree (this is called an industrial placement – like work experience, but for a whole year!). This time showed me that if I wanted to do research, I needed to do a PhD – so that’s what I did next, studying for a PhD in sugar chemistry, looking at how certain molecules control the signalling in our cells. The thought of oceanography had sort of given way at this point, and I was more interested in medicinal chemistry now. When I finished my PhD there had just been the global financial crash, so there weren’t many jobs for chemists, but I was lucky to get one at St Andrews researching fluorine chemistry and teaching undergrads – that’s what I still do today.