Profile

I have always had a love of science, in particular anything to do with the human body. As a little child I was captivated by a TV show called Once Upon A Time…. Life. Even to this day I remember the little cartoon characters representing different things in the body like red blood cells and bacteria. I wanted to understand how the body worked and from that day anything science related was of interest. Especially at secondary school, I loved science lessons and knew then I wanted to pursue science at university.

At university I studied Human Biology at St. Andrews. While there became interested in neuroscience and decided I wanted to continue on in science by doing a PhD in a neuroscience area. I got a place in Dundee to do a neuroscience-related PhD looking at type 2 diabetes, however, as science is so unpredictable it ended up being nothing to do with neuroscience! After my PhD I changed research fields and moved into cancer research where I learnt lots of new techniques which I have brought back with me to diabetes research when I returned two years ago knowing that this was where my true interest lies. Today I do research into how metformin, the number 1 drug treatment for type 2 diabetes, works. Exciting work!

Since my time as a PhD student I have been involved in science outreach taking part in science festivals and other activities. Since 2010 I have been a STEM ambassador and through that I found out about I’m A Scientist and here I am!

As there is no typical day I will tell you a little about one of my days this week – Thursday.

Morning: I started treating liver cells (the main site of action of metformin in the body) with different doses of metformin (the drug I am investigating) for a number of different experiments. These included looking at the release of glucose by the cells, release of ATP (the energy currency of a cell) and changes in the cell response by protein (samples generated will be later used in Western blotting). I also did some ordering of items I need for future experiments and wrote my lab meeting presentation.

Afternoon: I completed two of the experiments I started in the morning and stored the samples in the freezer for later analysis. I had a tea break – I love tea – with some colleagues. The final part of my day was presenting my recent results in a lab meeting to my boss Graham and other lab members Calum, a PhD student and Jean, a retired scientist who volunteers in our lab. All the lab are going to America for the American Diabetes Association conference in Boston at the beginning of June so we discussed final plans. This is my first international conference and I am presenting a poster of my data there. It will also be very exciting to meet the top researchers – scientists and clinicians – in the field.