Profile

I live in Gateshead which is a beautiful patch of the North East, with my parents and dog. I assist with care responsibilities for them as well as the usual jobs from shuttling the big shop in, walking the dog , coordinating professional family photographs at the past graduations so there’s new artwork for the fridge/mantelpiece.

I was a competitive swimmer in my youth, so absolutely love exercise and feel lost without it. I swim less than I used to because the early swim sessions are usually packed and nobody needs the lane rage of people tapping your feet or chatting at the wall to start or finish your day. I took up running on a recommendation to do Parkrun on a Saturday and I adored it, the community is lush, the scenery is too, you feel incredible afterwards. Bliss! It kick started a habit, I ran the 2019 Great North Run after about 8 months of parkrunning, then kept running through the winter, then the pandemic hit and my hour of allocated exercise at the park on my doorstep was an ideal opportunity to improve my running, 6 – 8 miles in the hour 3 times a week was where I was at when I started my PhD. There wasn’t a lot to do with lockdowns still going and living with high risk people so I ended up training for a 34 mile Ultra Marathon. I’ve done 2, absolute glutton for punishment.

Comedy is a joy, I love podcasts and live gigs. When the days are hard the most catharsis comes from laughter. Elis James and John Robins are two of my favourite comics.

And science fiction, arguably one of things that kickstarted my interest in sciences. I was raised on a healthy diet of Star Wars, Star Trek, and Jurassic Park. Then Doctor Who returned to TV when I was 10, I didn’t stand a chance. I was and still am hooked!

My work is a lot like the good, the bad and the ugly. The good bacteria I work with are called probiotic E.coli, compared to other bacteria in the gut the percentage of E.coli there is 0.1%. But they do help in a lot of ways to stop other bacteria from infecting the gut. Some of the E.coli I work on were isolated from poo samples over 100 years ago!! And they might be present in yours too!

The bad, disease causing bacteria that I work with is Salmonella, it causes a broad range of disease from food poisoning to Typhoid fever. The type I work on causes food poisoning, and the common symptom of diarrhoea. Most times your own bacteria keep them out but like Dr Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park says “Life, finds a way”. And they have really cool ways of rebuilding their numbers, making the environment better for them and evading the immune system.

And that’s where the ugly side comes in, working with bacteria there are lots of smells and gruesome sights and origins to some of the discoveries of gut bacteria.

But I love it, there’s so much cool work using simple and more complex techniques that really make you think. I saw one group made cells burst in the presence of another disease causing bacteria and I sat watching the video on repeat for ages. It’s a lovely bit of fun!

I’ve always been an early bird, at school I was a competitive swimmer so woke up at 4:30am to train at 5:30am. These days I have a lie in and get up at 5am, have a shower and do some stretches and strength and mobility exercises to stop me from developing a question mark shaped posture in my middle ages. I walk from home to the lab which is 3 miles away or about an hours walk, I started doing this because busses were irregular during covid but it’s an easy way of keeping fit and gives me time to switch on or off lab related thoughts.

Once I’m in the office I drop my bag, hang my coat and get the kettle on. It’s about 3 minutes til it’s ready, so I go and check how my bacteria have grown in tubes or on agar plates, and have enough time to pick up my lab washing. Then it’s time for coffee and planning the day of experiments out and answering my weight in emails.

At the moment I’m also supervising undergraduate and post graduate students, so I have to plan their day too. Sometimes this means doing more reading so I can answer any of their questions that I should know the answer to.

The morning goes quickly, and most of the time to lunch is jam packed with doing or preparing for experiments. Lots of the experiments are just me using my science tools; my trusty pipettes (a hi tech straw really) and a bunsen burner. But I also have a computer sidekick that works through the night on some experiments taking measurements of the bacterial growth or whether they light up or don’t. At the moment I’m looking at how Salmonella swim through agar plates and measure how far they get in a few hours. That’s pretty cool.

Lunchtimes are usually a nice rest, or chance to chat to other PhD students or attend talks about other people’s research.

The afternoons I start to tire out and there’s usually just more experiments,  data measurements from morning experiments to write down or analyse and the occasional meeting with someone, before setting up for the next day at 3pm. After that I make sure the computer is happy, and ready to do the overnight experiment. Big love to Omega and Sunrise for their hardwork!!

Most days finish by 6pm where I lock up and either go home for tea or attend some clubs or meet up with friends. Some days are longer depending on deadlines or if things go wrong 🙁

Early bedtime before midsummer murders finishes usually but no later than 10pm #RockandRoll