• Question: What is your favourite part of your job?

    Asked by anon-268252 on 4 Nov 2020. This question was also asked by anon-270116.
    • Photo: Samantha Watson

      Samantha Watson answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      Sorry I missed this at the time – but hope you might still get the answer in due course

      I get a kick from researching something that will have an impact on people’s health. Knowing I’ve done something worthwhile is a great feeling

    • Photo: Louise Topping

      Louise Topping answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      I love the excitement of performing an experiment and figuring out the results to see if it has worked or not. Most of the time I am testing new drugs for the treatment of arthritis, so I get really excited when I find a drug that works very well!

      Before COVID19 I would also have said that I love the opportunities to travel to cool new places all over the world for conferences, but in the near future they will all take place online instead 🙁

    • Photo: Stephanie Longet

      Stephanie Longet answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      I am working on immune responses post viral infections or post vaccination in animal models and humans. My favorite part of my job is to design an experiment. It might be challenging because it is necessary to define a specific question then find which techniques (in vitro, in vivo) and tools (cell lines, animals) are the most appropriate to get data to answer the question. Then it is necessary to define the best conditions (scheme of vaccinations or infections). Then finally when I get the data, I have to define the best analysis.

    • Photo: Kirsty Lindsay

      Kirsty Lindsay answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      I love doing outreach and speaking to people about my work, it’s great seeing people engage with topics I love.

      On the science side, it’s hard to choose between collecting data in the lab, which usually has lots of toys (equipment) and data analysis. The first moment you see a pattern and realise you found something is so exciting!

    • Photo: Nooshin Ghavami

      Nooshin Ghavami answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      I love the fact that I get to work closely with clinicians and see how the coding and engineering work which I do can actually be used in hospitals and on patients. It makes all the hours sitting behind the computer worthwhile!

    • Photo: John Tregoning

      John Tregoning answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      The people. It’s so good to see people develop and learn.

      (I also like discovering new things, being my own boss, having an office to myself and drinking tea)

    • Photo: Christopher Marriott

      Christopher Marriott answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      I love pretty much all of my job, but my favourite part is running the experiments themselves. As a synthetic medicinal chemist, I make a lot of compounds which are then tested to see if they target what they are supposed to, and the sense of anticipation and excitement I get whenever I try to make something that has never been made before is a really good feeling!

    • Photo: Colin swift

      Colin swift answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      Hi,

      I imagine knowing that I’ve made a positive impact to the services I look after. Ensuring that patients are treated safely and effectively – and also ensuring the safety of staff who use radiation (particularly lasers and ultraviolet sources) so no one gets blinded or burnt or indeed no one accidentally starts fires – which can happen with lasers!

      Hope this answers your question.

      Colin.

    • Photo: Abbie Smith

      Abbie Smith answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      One of my favourite things is solving problems! When something on a treatment machine isn’t working, we have to work with Engineers to figure out! It can be hard but working with other people to figure stuff out is always exciting.

    • Photo: Leo Swadling

      Leo Swadling answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      My favourite bit is meeting lots of interesting people and talking about science! I worked in Oxford with 30 people and there were only 2 of us from the UK so I learnt lots about other countries and cultures and now have friends to visit all around the world. Now I work in London with friends from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Argentina, Italy, Spain, Singapore…
      Most of the people I work with are very smart and are enthusiastic about their work which makes it a nice environment to work in.

      I also really like learning new things and there is always a long list of things I need to read about and learn about to help with my current work.

    • Photo: Gareth Nye

      Gareth Nye answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      I love lots of things in my job! I love the faces on students when I tell them something amazing about the body like how our hearts beat nearly 150,000 times a day! I also love researching things and finding out new ways to help people get better particularly as I work in pregnancy and babies health

    • Photo: Joanna Giles

      Joanna Giles answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      I really enjoy this part! Getting to talk to students is great as it makes me think about what I’m doing. I also love performing the experiments, sitting in the lab getting everything ready and following the method. It’s a bit like baking a cake, if it all goes well I end up with results I am happy with! 🙂

    • Photo: Matthew Kelbrick

      Matthew Kelbrick answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      My favourite part of my job is reaching a conclusion. I may have to go through a series of long and complex experiment. but when I have all my data and am able to conclude an answer from it, its so rewarding and makes it all worth it.

    • Photo: Andrew Stark

      Andrew Stark answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      Turning an idea into a chemical process that be run on Kg scale. Then knowing at the end we’ve made enough of a specific molecule to allow clinical trials to progress and see if it can become a medicine that will save lives.

    • Photo: Catherine Ross

      Catherine Ross answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      I love that I get to influence the future of scientists within the NHS. At this really important time our scientists in the health service are doing some incredibly important work, testing COVID-19 samples, looking after the ventilators in ICU, and looking at hearts and lungs in our sick patients. Its a great time to be a scientist!

    • Photo: Ben Lewis

      Ben Lewis answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      I love the fact that there are so many surprises! Often we are trying to answer questions which nobody knows the answer to. We might have an idea what we will find, but sometimes we don’t and other times the answer we get is not at all what we expected! It means that doing the experiments is often really exciting. It’s also amazing to imagine that my research may one day have a big impact, hopefully on finding new ways to deal with diseases that affect a lot of people!

    • Photo: Laura Durrant

      Laura Durrant answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      I love having the opportunity to learn new things and techniques. Our department is quite multi-disciplinary and we really encourage people to shift around and learn new skills from different teams. So it’s not like we’re always doing the same thing every day – we get to experience diversity and challenge ourselves as scientists, which I’m very appreciative of!

    • Photo: Duncan Sleeman

      Duncan Sleeman answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      The favourite part of my job is to watch people succeed and push their boundaries. Being a scientist is great fun and a role I thoroughly enjoy, but the thing I take the most joy from is recognising skills in other people and assisting them to reach their full potential. This can sometimes involve them doing things they never thought they would!

    • Photo: Estela Gonzalez Fernandez

      Estela Gonzalez Fernandez answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      I love learning every day. To perform the experiment we need to read and check a lot of protocols, risk assessments, articles published for other scientists. Learning new things from others and from our own findings it’s probably what I like the most from my job

    • Photo: Louisa James

      Louisa James answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      Getting new results from experiments, it is always exciting and satisfying when an experiment works well and you are able to find something new

    • Photo: James Harris

      James Harris answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      Meeting new people, and talking about science. It’s great to sit and chat with people about your results, and the questions that need to be answered. Everyone you speak to will come up with a different idea on how to address the big questions, and thats what leads to really interesting experiments.

    • Photo: Gemma Chew

      Gemma Chew answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      I love all parts of my job but my favourite thing is to make new molecules no one has made before! I like the fact that every day in the lab is different and my job never gets boring.

    • Photo: Sarah Curtis

      Sarah Curtis answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      I really enjoy the different aspects of my job from reading the literature, to designing the experiments, getting things working and analysing the data before writing a paper (hopefully). It’s that sense of putting a very small piece of a jigsaw puzzle into the much bigger picture. It’s also interesting to talk to the public (including school children) about the work you do as they always ask great questions that really make you think.

    • Photo: Jack Allen

      Jack Allen answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      Generally it is the hope that my work will lead to improved images for doctors to use to help patients.
      Day to day, I enjoy making tweaks to how the MRI scanner operates and seeing my work being evaluated in patient scans. Seeing the human side reminds me of the true reason for my job.

    • Photo: Leonardo Mancini

      Leonardo Mancini answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      It’s challenging, ever changing and asks you to be creative

    • Photo: Madhumeeta Chadha

      Madhumeeta Chadha answered on 4 Nov 2020:


      After spending a good amount of time optimizing and troubleshooting different aspects, I love it when the experiment finally works! Also, it is a wonderful feeling that my work will be used in hospitals and improve patient care.

    • Photo: Ramsay Singer

      Ramsay Singer answered on 5 Nov 2020:


      My favourite thing is collaborating with other scientists. It’s great to hear other people’s thoughts on my data, and to share what I think about their results. This often leads to exciting new developments with my work.

    • Photo: Joanna Furnival-Adams

      Joanna Furnival-Adams answered on 5 Nov 2020:


      I love the diversity of my job – one day I will be dissecting mosquito abdomens in the lab and the next day I will be driving to rural villages to distribute mosquito nets to householders. I am learning new skills every day!

      I also love being able to interact with people using our mosquito nets – these nets are the product of years of experiments and innovation so it is exciting to see how they really work in communities!

    • Photo: Sarah Mistry

      Sarah Mistry answered on 5 Nov 2020:


      My favourite part of my job is getting results back from our collaborators in the pharmacology department. It’s always exciting to see whether the compounds that I have made are active at their target. I also really enjoy being able to work with different people in companies and universities all over the world.

    • Photo: Madi Davies

      Madi Davies answered on 5 Nov 2020:


      There are so many parts I enjoy! I love that my research has to stay so current, so I am always looking to gain new skills, and to apply the latest thinking or modelling or software to my research – I get to be really innovative and think creatively which is great.

      I would also say the people. Working in an environment you find challenging and exciting, you get to meet so many people who think similarly to you, or are interested in the same things, or approach a problem differently. That is really fun to be around, and you are able to feel challenged often but still supported.

      We also have some great opportunities to travel. I have been to San Diego, Denver, Amsterdam and Las Vegas as part of my job! I was meant to be in Monaco this year which I was really looking forward to – but hopefully in 2021 🙂

    • Photo: Katherine Vilain

      Katherine Vilain answered on 5 Nov 2020:


      I love when I get to build a new decision model. There are so many pieces to pull together and make sense of, and I get to learn new things every time. Creating a model is like solving a really tangled logic puzzle!

    • Photo: Veronica Pravata

      Veronica Pravata answered on 6 Nov 2020:


      I think the thrill of cracking the mysteries of biology! There are so many things we don’t know, and it’s so exciting to discover new things that in the future could help us in helping people!

    • Photo: Laura Blaikie

      Laura Blaikie answered on 6 Nov 2020:


      My favourite part is knowing that I am making brand new molecules that no one has made before! Seeing my work published for people all around the world to read is also really rewarding. I am still relatively new to research, but I hope the novelty of this will never wear off because it’s so exciting!

    • Photo: Aishwarya Mishra

      Aishwarya Mishra answered on 7 Nov 2020:


      To be able look inside the body non invasively and without causing damage. The power of imaging.

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