Profile

Hi everyone, I’m Eileen!

I’m a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh and I study mental health in young people. I’m interested in why people might get mental health problems – does it depend on their genes, their brains, or maybe how they grow up?

When I was in school, I wanted to be a doctor. Things didn’t go to plan for me and I had to choose my back-up, Neuroscience. I was upset about it then, but it turns out that I really liked science and doing research! So even though things didn’t go how I wanted, everything has worked out in the end.

I’m Autistic, which means my brain can be a bit different from other people’s when it takes in information. It means I find my research so fun though – I can get totally absorbed in reading about a new topic! It also means that when I say I love dogs and plants, I REALLY love them – I learned lots of dog breeds and know some Latin plant names.

My favourite thing to do is to spend an evening with my partner or a few friends, cuddling my dog, playing board games and eating cheese. I’m not very sporty, but I do love to go for a walk in the forest if it’s not muddy with Rosa.

I work with “big data”. This means that hundreds or even thousands of people have volunteered to tell researchers about their lives!

I mostly look for patterns in young people who have depression or other mental health issues. I can then compare these people (“cases”) with people who don’t have depression (“controls”). By looking for the differences between cases and controls, I can see what types of activities might make you more likely to get depression. On the flip-side, I can also find out what types of activities could protect you from depression!

Since I work with “big data”, I don’t have a traditional science lab with test tubes and beakers. Almost all of my work takes place on a computer which means I can work wherever I have internet. I recently started teaching some undergraduate classes in statistics, which gives some nice structure to my week.

The great thing about being a PhD researcher is that my days are really flexible. I usually have a few different tasks through the day – checking emails, analysing data, writing papers. So when I get bored of writing, I can switch to doing something else! Depending on how focused I am, I finish work anywhere between 4pm and 7pm with plenty of dog cuddles to break up the day.