Profile

I started my work as a scientist lookin at the kidneys, which are really hard working organs. Normally your kidneys are amazing: they filter your blood far better than any  machine can. Now I work in a cancer research lab.

My work is mostly on cancer cells or mice with cancer and we often change the cells to make the cells glow so we can track their movement in the body. I use a lot of tests to look at how well the cells grow in dishes and on plates. These tests can look at how fast the cells are growing, how well the cells move and how well the cells use energy. Using these tests we can try to use drugs on the cell to see if there are any useful targets that slow the cancer cells down.

This is the very start of cancer research that helps us understand how treatments work or how the cancer might become resistant to a particular drug.

We have to keep our cells growing, but some of the cells are left sleeping in temperatures of -196 degrees celsius so we can use them later.

I travel in to Uni on the train and do something creative – it’s my down time so I usually knit. Sometimes I check my emails.

I’m in the lab a lot,

I have microscope slides with kidney on them that get washed and then stained all different colours. With other slides I might be looking for something really small – so I have to use antibodies to find it, those slides end up brown which is a bit of a boring colour!

Antibodies are like little clothes pegs that can only peg certain things to the washing line, so you know what you’ve found if it clips on! They are really really special clothes pegs and usually only peg to one thing out of the MILLIONS in my kidney slices.

If I need some urine samples I put my rats in specially made cages that collect the samples – I always give my rats a treat when they have been to the toilet. The treat food is mash, it looks like squishy breakfast cereal but they really like it and will take it out of my hand.

Email and filling are the less fun aspects of my day.

I like bright colours – and I’m easy to spot in a crowd, unless you’re little like me too: