• Question: When did you become interested in your field of work ?

    Asked by Gulliver 2k18 to Neil, Alan, Ciorsdaidh, Lauren, Leonie, Martin, Shuo on 6 Mar 2018. This question was also asked by ShakeeshA.
    • Photo: Lauren Webster

      Lauren Webster answered on 6 Mar 2018:


      When I was 15 years old I needed medicine to save my life. The medicine I got was a cure for some symptoms (blood poisoning) but it did not cure me. I wanted to know why was there not a cure. Could there be a cure? Interestingly, since working for the drug discovery unit, I worked on the very thing I suffer from and we are still trying to find a cure.

    • Photo: Neil Keddie

      Neil Keddie answered on 6 Mar 2018:


      During my undergraduate degree, I worked for a Drug Discovery Company as part of my degree. My role was part of a team trying to discover new short acting pain relief drugs for use in surgery that were safer than the drugs currently used. Our drug molecules targeted a site on the cell surface called the CB2 receptor, which is the same site that is activated for pain relief when people smoke cannabis. Our compound was designed to give the pain relief, without all the other side effects of cannabis use.

      The whole challenge of building carbon based molecules was really exciting, and I knew that was what I wanted to keep doing. This area of research is called organic synthesis, which is used to make molecules for so many different uses (such as drugs, materials, plastics, liquid crystals, agrochemical, OLEDs). I’ve done different bits of research over the years, but all of them used organic synthesis to make molecules for various purposes.

    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 6 Mar 2018:


      I changed direction to some extent when I became an academic scientist. During the PhD I used lasers to help understand where the energy goes when we shine a light on a molecules and it falls apart. However, when I became an academic scientist, I decided to begin looking a processes on surfaces some of which involved light. So although I’d had a interest in science since primary school days, my current direction wasn’t set until I was 25 or so.

    • Photo: Leonie Bole

      Leonie Bole answered on 6 Mar 2018:


      I became interested in my field of work during my Master’s project. I quickly became fascinated with air-sensititve chemistry and how important it was to synthesis. I love the idea of using cheap metals to do the important reactions that expensive metals normally are needed for.

    • Photo: Alan McCue

      Alan McCue answered on 9 Mar 2018:


      I got interested in catalysis when I was a 3rd year undergraduate student. So guess around 21 years old

    • Photo: Shuo Zhang

      Shuo Zhang answered on 12 Mar 2018:


      I got interested in my research during my master’s degree. Since I got some amazing achievements, creating artificial three dimensional tissue and improving its efficacy, I find myself interesed in research and decided to move on.

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