Profile

My name is Bill and I grew up in Waterford, a small city in the south of Ireland. I moved to Scotland two years ago to do my PhD after I finished college in Dublin. I live alone in my flat with my many house plants (since I’m not allowed to have a pet). My favourite thing to do is visit my family and friends back home in Ireland as much as I can. We spend a lot of time walking in the countryside or at the beach. In Scotland, I love to do the same and try to spend my free time hiking or walking in the countryside!

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease that affects mainly the older generation. It is caused by the death of cells within the brain. We aren’t sure exactly what causes the cells in your brain to start dying yet but we know that a big problem is when proteins inside these cells start to clump together and form lumps or aggregates. My research focuses on trying to break up these aggregates and get rid of the proteins inside them. I do this by getting cells in the lab to express these proteins and make these aggregates and then I try treat them with different approaches to see if we can fix the problem.

I usually wake up around 6.30am (way too early to function) and get to the lab for 8. Firstly I look at my plan for the day to see what I need to get done and then I usually get straight into the lab. I put on my labcoat and goggles to make sure I am protected from the chemicals I use in the lab. I sometimes start off by running gels to look at proteins within my cells. This normally takes a whole day to do so I start early. Once I have my gels running, I go to the special room where we grow our cells. This room has to be super clean to stop any bad bacteria or contaminants getting into our cells which could ruin our whole experiment. I normally spend a few hours in this room looking after my cells, splitting them into new dishes when they’ve grown too big and sometimes harvesting them to look at the proteins inside them! Normally I spend my evenings on the computer, looking at my results, reading up on the latest research and planning my day for the next day. I usually leave the lab at around 5 or 6pm and walk home. I eat my dinner and relax for the evening with a book or some netflix and get ready to do it all again the next day.