• Question: what inspired you to become a scientist

    Asked by xbubblelovex to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 23 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by chloeroberts, princessrhiannon, xchelseax, charlottemarie, mollyheartsjoeyessex, jayden2609, 9faol, 09emaddena, birun, hannahsandford, paigetucker, xchelseaannex, begeckochan, mcfaceface49, annix11, beckycurtlin.
    • Photo: Gemma Staite

      Gemma Staite answered on 23 Jun 2012:

      I was always fascinated by the human body which helped. As I got older I loved Silent Witness and I really wanted their job, but for real. Unfortunately I was never going to be able to accomplish that, but luckily I was introduced to pathology. I went to an open evening at a local hospital and from there I knew it was what I wanted and had a new direction.

    • Photo: Andrew Thomas

      Andrew Thomas answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      I think the one thing that I can put my finger on was when I was in year 7 my Chemistry teacher brought a flask of liquid nitrogen into school. I was amazed by this stuff that could turn rubber to a glassy material in an instant and the way it skidded across the floor if you spilled it. I originally wanted to be a dentist but decided to study Chemistry instead and started to realise that actually my research could help dentists and doctors make more efficient materials to repair and hopefully cure the body of some diseases.

    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      I didn’t really choose to be come a scientist, I kind of realised one day that I was one!
      I made a series of choices that put me where I am. I didn’t know what I wanted to be at school, so I just did the subjects that I was good at. You had to do the sciences anyway, it just so happened I was good at them. When I’d finished my GCSE’s I had to do A-levels to appease my parents, so I chose the ones I was good at, Chemistry, Biology and Art, then I chose Classics because the course guide looked really interesting, all greeks and romans and archaeology. I didn’t know if I wanted to do a degree, so I did a BTEC to help me decide if I liked art or science better, I figured that Art was something I could do myself in spare time and develope independently, however I’d need to be taught science if I wanted to progress so I did my BSc in Pharmacology, got really interested in molecular biology, was given the opportunity to take it further in a PhD, so I did that, then got offered the opportunity to work on something really interesting in the form of mitochondria so I did that too!

      I feel that you have to be open to opportunities that befall you. I’m a complete opportunist and have always just done whatever it appears I’m good at rather than forcing myself to do things that I’ll never be the best at.

    • Photo: Ashley Cadby

      Ashley Cadby answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      I always like puzzles so I was always quite good at science in school. However, I was very lazy and it was not until my teacher told me I would never get anywhere I started to work, to prove him wrong. Since then I have read a lot about how science has changed the world and scientist like Turing, Feyman and Carothers did amazing things by just being curious.

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      One word: Artificial hearts!

      When I was a high school student (like you) I heard a talk by a girl who implanted artificial hearts in people! She was a biological engineer… she engineered the mechanical heart and helped surgeon implant it, since she also knew biology! That inspired me to go into biological engineering… and the rest is history!

      Biological engineering is all about engineering for biological applications… “the application of concepts and methods of biology (and secondarily of physics, chemistry, mathematics, and computer science) to solve real-world problems related to the life sciences and/or the application thereof, using engineering’s own analytical and synthetic methodologies and also its traditional sensitivity to the cost and practicality of the solution(s) arrived at.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_engineering

      As a biological engineer I designed and engineered gold nanoparticles (i.e. mechanical parts) that could be loaded with drugs and used for imaging and cancer therapies inside the human body!

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