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Asked by charlottepardoe to Alex, Marcus, Claire, Kate, Neil on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by georgiabeckett, imz37, thedolphinoflife, mau1.
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Marcus Johns answered on 17 Jun 2014:
Hey Charlotte,
I’m currently a PhD, Doctorate in Philosophy, student. This means I’m technically still in education but, rather than being taught a subject, I’m researching a very specific subject and trying to expand human knowledge under the supervision of people who have been doing this for many years.
This isn’t easy to do and most of my time is spent either reading round my subject to find out what other people have been researching and to give me ideas, or in the lab trying new experiments that will hopefully give me some results that I can tell other people about.
The aim of my PhD is to create a material made from cellulose and chitosan that can support the growth of heart cells. In a wider context, this could potentially lead to a reduction in the number of people who die from a heart attack, or are seriously ill because of one, if the product was commercialised. However, my aim is not to commercialise the product but to investigate how changing certain material properties affects the growth of the cells and whether the overall aim is possible.
Does that help?
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Claire Brockett answered on 17 Jun 2014:
Hi charlottepardoe, georgiabeckett and imz37,
I’m an academic research fellow. I work at a university, and my time is split between doing research and teaching students. I really enjoy both aspects. Rather like school, I’m only involved in teaching during term time (Oct-Dec, Jan-June) but over the summer I try to write new lectures and update things to make sure the students get the latest information.
For my research, I am looking at developing better treatment options for ankles. This means I apply all my engineering knowledge to problem solving ankles. Ankle injuries and damage fall into three main categories, and depending on treatment, may lead to other problems later on. So I’m working with other researchers to look at how ankle sprains occur, and what tissues get damaged; looking at how well bones repair when the ankle is fractured, and finally, as you get older how arthritis in the ankle occurs. For each of these problems, there might be good treatments (implants, special shoes or inserts, different plates for mending the bone fractures) that help patients recover, and prevent people having recurring pain or damage. I have 4 PhD students working with me to try to tackle a bit of each of these problems, but as it’s such a big area to look at, its actually going to take a few years for us to get good answers – and we’ll probably need a few more people to join the team. Hopefully one of you might be able to help in the future? -
Alex Lyness answered on 17 Jun 2014:
Hey charlottepardoe, georgiabeckett and imz37,
I’m an engineer that works at Loughborough University who designs new drug delivery devices that inject human cells (that have been collected from donors or grown in a lab) into patients to treat injuries and diseases. My time gets split between researching existing ideas and then developing them into prototypes and testing them. What could be simpler than that?
For more info on what I and the other 4 engineers do in a day, check out our profiles.
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Kate Niehaus answered on 17 Jun 2014:
I am also a student at the moment, so, like all PhD students, what I try to do is push humanity’s knowledge of world forward just a tiny, tiny little bit. Eventually, the collective work from professors and students like me pushes our knowledge forward enough that we understand something a little bit better, and it ends up in the textbooks that you study in school.
After my degree, I’ll hopefully make a living by trying to develop medical products. For example, think of it like this:
1. A scientist or engineer in a research lab/university performs experiments to see if they can make a test that will predict which drug works well for a different patient with cancer. These experiments might involve some algorithms and modeling work and some experiments with cells.
2. The scientist/engineer finds that they can predict which drugs to use, so they publish their work, and our understanding of the world advances a little bit
3. But! This still doesn’t help anyone with cancer yet. In order to do actually get the test to the patients, you have to commercialize the test
4. It may sound simple to just make lots of the test for all the patients who need it, but it’s not that easy. There is a lot of regulation, a lot of testing that you must perform, the test has to be very robust, you have to explain to doctors how the test works, you have to make a supply chain to get the test to the hospital, you need people to sell the test, you have to make some money selling the test so that you can continue to make them, etc, etc – it turns out that you need a lot of people to do this! Companies like this are where I’d eventually like to work.
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