Profile

I live in Ipswich, I play the piano and I like drawing. I love to travel and soak up other cultures, but closer to home I love to meet up with friends for a sing and a dance. I am a cat person, a hufflepuff, and I’m currently trying to grow my own bonsai tree.

Humans, animals and plants are all made up of very tiny building blocks called cells. In fact, the human body is composed of trillions of cells! These cells are always dividing to help us grow and stay healthy.

Sometimes the cells will start to divide too quickly and this leads to a disease called cancer.

Very clever scientists worked out that we can grow these cells, outside of the human body in a laboratory so that we can do experiments with them. These are the experiments I do at work every day!

I try to find the properties of the cancer cells that makes them divide too quickly, so other scientists know which properties to target in their medicines.

When I check the cells first thing in the morning, sometimes the cells will grow nicely and look happy, sometimes they will look very unhappy. You never know what to expect. Sometimes cells just look ‘weird’. I work in a large lab where there are always lots of other scientists around so we can all show each other if we think something looks weird.

I get all my special labware ready. This includes plastic flasks that the cells grow in, and special liquid called ‘media’ which gives the cells all the nutrients that they need to grow. I use these items to make sure the cells stay healthy!

In the afternoon I will usually catch up on some of the office work that our science produces. This can include analysing data, planning future experiments or trying to make sure all our experiments work as they should.