Profile – Disease Detectives Zone

Education:

St Columba’s High School, University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, University of Manchester
Qualifications:

Standard grades, Highers, Advanced Highers, BSc in biological sciences, MRes in Biomedical Science, MSc in clinical science, PhD in cell engineering.
Work History:

Summer student, postgraduate researcher, teaching assistant
Current Job:

Clinical Scientist

About Me:

I’m a clinical scientist based in a hospital. I enjoy trying to understand how biological systems fit together and love putting on my lab coat to get stuck into any practical work in the laboratory. You can often find me baking up a storm in the kitchen or trying all sorts of different foods in my down time!
My Typical Day:

Everyday brings a new set of challenges, and no day is the same! The most important part of my job is to look at test results to help doctors to work out what might be causing their patients to feel ill, and using my skills as a scientist to make sure that the test results coming out from the lab are correct. It’s a little bit like being a problem-solver.
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Other things I might do are to check that the equipment in the lab is working as it should be, by regularly looking at reports and results. We can also do useful research and develop new tests from scratch or test new technologies for the diagnosis of disease. Often we will look to try and improve the way we are doing things, and sometimes do teaching and training of staff or students. When I used to be a researcher in a university, I would spend most of my time in the lab doing experiments, and analysing data with the aim to discover something new that would help those people with bone diseases. My current job is different in that I’m not in the lab so much, but my work is more directly involved in the care of patients.

Louisa Lee