Profile
Christopher Marriott
My CV
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Education:
Merchant Taylors’ Boys School in Crosby, Liverpool, University of St Andrews in Scotland, University of East Anglia in Norwich
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Qualifications:
10 GCSEs, 3 A-Levels, 1 MChem, working on my PhD.
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Work History:
None, I’ve been in education all of my life!
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Current Job:
Associate Tutor and PhD student
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About Me:
I’m a PhD student working at the University of East Anglia, working on finding new drugs. Outside of my work, I love climbing, doing martial arts and playing board and video games!
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I’m a PhD student currently working at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, which is in the East of England. I’ve lived here for the past 3 years, but before that I lived in a little town called St Andrews in Scotland for 5 years, so I’ve moved around a lot! I live with my girlfriend, who has never left Norwich for longer than a week, so we’re quite different. When I’m not working, I go rock climbing and train in a martial art called Taekwon-do, or when I can persuade enough people to join me I play board games!
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I’m a medicinal chemist, which is someone who does chemistry to make new drugs…not the illegal kind, stuff like headache medicines, anti-allergy medicines and other medicines that help people feel better when they’re not well. I’m focused on making antibiotics, which are medicines doctors give to people when they have nasty cells inside them called bacteria. We’re running out of antibiotics that work against some smarter bacteria, because they’ve figured out how to ignore the antibiotics that we take, so we need to keep making new ones or else things like surgeries or even something as simple as scraping your knee by falling off your bike could make you very sick!
Nature is a very good place to start when we’re looking for new drugs, because things like plants and mushrooms need to be able to fight off infections. They do this by making chemicals called natural products, and some of these chemicals are really useful at killing bacteria. The only problem is that some of these natural products need a little bit of help with surviving the journey inside of our body, or actually getting to the bacteria, because the human body will try to break down the natural products and turn them into energy, like it does with our food.
That’s where I come in! I make little changes to the chemical structure of these chemicals, and then test them to see if the changes I’ve made have affected their ability to attack bacteria, as well as to see how well they’ll hold up in our body. As I’m writing this, I’m just about to start testing some of my chemicals against bacteria, so I hope they go well!
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My Typical Day:
I wake up and get out of my house just as the sun begins to rise. Then I start up my lab equipment – heating equipment, stirrers, vacuum pumps – before making as many chemicals as I can in a day!
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I normally get into work at between 8am and 9am Monday to Friday, which means that I’m normally the first person in my laboratory to arrive, and so I need to switch everything on. This includes things like hotplates, which we use to heat our chemical reactions, and the vacuum pump, which is useful for when we don’t want any air inside our chemical reactions. Before I start work, though, I also need to put on all of my protective equipment, to make sure I don’t hurt myself with any of the chemicals I’m using. This includes my labcoat (which used to be white, but is a lot dirtier now!), safety glasses and some snazzy purple gloves!
I then start making lots of chemicals, as many as I can, using all of my lab equipment. Once I’ve set up all of my chemical reactions, I like to go and grab a cup of coffee from the local coffee shop, and drink it while I read some science papers to keep up-to-date with the most recent science that is happening around the world. Once my chemical reactions are done, which can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 6 hours, I get the chemical that I want out of the reaction and clean it up to make sure that there’s no other chemicals mixed in with it. I can normally make and clean two or three chemicals a day, but sometimes I can do up to 5 in one day! I normally finish work at between 4pm and 5pm, but I have had to stay in work until 8pm before…not very often though!
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I’d love to make an interactive activity to take into schools to explain antibiotics and why we need to take care when we’re using them!
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Keen, friendly and cheerful
What did you want to be after you left school?
A forensic scientist-one of those people who gets all of the evidence from crime scenes and then runs loads of tests to help the police figure out who the bad guy is
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Maybe once or twice, but I was a goody two-shoes most of the time
Who is your favourite singer or band?
It's a band called In Flames...they're certainly not everyone's cup of tea, and you probably won't hear them on the radio!
What's your favourite food?
Pizza, especially Cheese and Tomato pizza
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
To be rich, to be happy, and to live in a warm country!
Tell us a joke.
I'd love to tell you a joke, but all of the good jokes argon...
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