Profile
Kam Pou Ha
My CV
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Education:
– St Marylebone CofE School (GCSEs)
– Henrietta Barnett School (A Levels)
– Imperial College London (undergraduate, masters, PhD) -
Qualifications:
– GCSEs (English, Maths, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Art, History, French, Religious Studies, Information Technology)
– A Levels (Maths, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, AS English Literature)
– Undergraduate degree in Biochemistry
– Masters degree in Biomedical Research (Bacterial Pathogenesis and Infection)
– PhD in Clinical Medicine Research (Infectious Disease) -
Current Job:
Microbiologist
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About Me:
Hi, I’m Kam. I like cake, blueberries and cheese toasties.
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I live in London. My favourite flower is wisteria, which climbs up the side of buildings and looks a bit like bunches of purple grapes. For the past year, I have eaten a cheese toastie every day for lunch. I like origami (folding paper to make pretty shapes). Recently, I made a turtle:
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My PhD was on the superbug called MRSA, a harmful bacterium that is quite a problem in hospitals. I wanted to find out how our bodies fight it off, and how we could improve this. My work involved working with human blood, which contains the immune cells that are important for killing bacteria. Our immune cells have many ways of killing bacteria, so I looked into which one was being used and what part of the bacterium it targeted. To do this, I had to change the DNA of the bacterium to see which genes were important, as well as creating a strain that glowed green under certain conditions:
The second part of my project was to discover new ways to treat MRSA infections, for example, ways to make our current antibiotics work better or making new antibiotics in general. I worked with the Chemistry department to make molecules that could be helpful, and then tested them out using techniques that I had to develop myself. Some of these techniques required me to make a very specific bacterial enzyme from scratch, which was much easier said than done!
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My Typical Day:
I take bacteria and mix it with different things that can kill it. These things can be medicines, chemicals, or even blood! Then I count how many bacteria are still alive.
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My day varies depending on what sort of experiment I have planned. More recently (post-PhD), I’ve been working on a bacterium that causes food poisoning and trying to see how it is killed by human immune cells. I’ll describe a typical day carrying out an experiment for this. Generally, I come into work around 10 am and start growing the bacteria for the day’s experiment, which takes about 2-3 hours. During this time, I need to prepare immune cells from human blood. This needs to be taken fresh on the day, so I need to have organised suitable blood donors, blood takers and all the necessary forms in advance! It takes a little while to get the immune cells out of the blood, involving a lot of spinning of the cells using scientific equipment. During the long spins, I make tea and/or have lunch. On Tuesdays, we have a food market on campus and so I’ll head over to see what looks good.
Once the spins are all done, I mix the bacteria and immune cells together. Since immune cells have different ways of killing bacteria, I want to stop each one to see whether it’s important for killing the bacterium I’m studying, so in each mixture I add different chemicals to do this. I leave the mixtures for a few hours, taking a small sample every 30 minutes to an hour. Between measurements, I’ll be at my desk either checking emails, looking at previous experiment data, catching up on reading of scientific papers, and/or having another cup of tea!
Each sample is mixed with a water-based salt solution and tiny amounts placed onto an agar plate (this is a petri dish containing a jelly-like substance that helps bacteria grow). After leaving the bacteria to grow overnight, I count how many bacteria grow on the agar plates.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
To develop fun science games to engage secondary school students.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Friendly, inquisitive, silly
What did you want to be after you left school?
A scientist
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Yes, for chatting sometimes
What's your favourite food?
Pizza
Tell us a joke.
What do you call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear!
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