Profile

I live in Cambridge with my boyfriend. We would like to buy a house and get a dog soon, but for now we’re enjoying the pretty sights of central Cambridge. I love to eat out, especially by the river. I love baking, particularly banana bread and lemon drizzle cake! I enjoy painting and I make little clay pots. I try to do yoga everyday and I love travelling the world. I lived in Australia for 6 months after University.

We receive cells and tissues from patients at Addenbrooke’s hospital. They have very kindly given us permission to do research on their cells. We process the cells in many different ways. One mechanism we use counts the number of cells and sorts them into groups depending upon their function. We may also need to cut the tissues to make sure we are looking at the right area. We put the tissues in a special medium which freezers them and makes them easier to cut. I then put tissues/cells onto slides. These slides are stained with either a basic stain called H&E, which allows us to see cell structure. Alternatively, we use fluorescent dyes and we can look at these beneath a special high powered microscope. We’re able to tell you what every cell is, its function and exact location. We can analyse the images and data on the computer using specialist systems.

One day is never the same. That’s what makes my work so exciting! Some days I have a lot of experiments, so I’m mainly in the lab mixing reagents (liquids and powders) together and putting them on the cells/tissues I’m working on. I may load slides into the microscope and scan all the images into the computer. I then look at the beautiful fluorescent images and work out the areas of interest. Other days, I have less labwork and more time for learning. I have given lots of scientific presentations to my team. Everyday we have the opportunity to listen to new and exciting research being conducted by the Researchers on campus, and we have visits from scientists from all over the world. We are constantly developing our techniques and improving our experiments through daily meetings and idea sharing sessions.