• Question: What type of science do you specialise in ???

    Asked by gunner01 to Dilwar, Lou, Rachel, Simon, Susan on 12 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Rachel Dakin

      Rachel Dakin answered on 12 Nov 2013:

      As your career in science gets longer you become more and more specialised. I would consider my specialism to be vascular biology – that’s bascially knowing all about blood vessels. However I’m still quite young (scientifically speaking) so there’s lots more for me to learn about blood vessels.
      I’d like to say I specialise in viruses too but not yet!

    • Photo: Simon Langley-Evans

      Simon Langley-Evans answered on 12 Nov 2013:

      I am a nutritionist and my real specialism is in biochemistry and metabolism during pregnancy. I know all about how nutrients pass from mothers to babies and how this changes the way babies grow.

      Rachel is right- most scientists become more and more specialised as they gain more experience. I am the most senior scientist in the zone and am finding something interesting happening as having become very specialised and interested in one thing, I now have the luxury of dabbling in lots of side interests too, so actually I am now less specialised than I was a few years ago.

    • Photo: Susan Skelton

      Susan Skelton answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      I specialise in a type of physics called “photonics”. I look at all the weird and wonderful things we can do with light, and how we can use it as a tool to find out about the world on the tiniest scale.

      I use powerful light beams called lasers to look at, pick up and move around tiny objects that are too small to see or touch, including cells from our bodies, stinky bacteria, and even single atoms – the smallest pieces of matter in the universe.

      The work that I do has both pure and applied aspects: I help to generate new knowledge about how the world works, and this knowledge is used for lots of useful applications – one of which is medical research, including cancer diagnosis and treatment.

    • Photo: Louise Brown

      Louise Brown answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      I’m a bit like Rachel in that I am young (scientifically speaking, 24 is probably old to you!). So far, I’d say I specialise in cancer biology and how cancer spreads and grows. I am currently working on a protein called maspin in breast cancer, but I imagine once I finish this project, I will work on something completely different,. It will probably involve cell behaviour and looking after cells, as thats what I’m good at (sometimes)!

Comments