Profile

I am on  a PhD program, researching regenerative medicine. Regenerative medicine is a relatively new area which involves helping the body to fix itself through using clever materials such as polymers to replace damaged tissues/organs, and using stem cells (a type of cell that can turn into different cell types) as a drug to help overcome diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s.

My project involves making synthetic proteins and attaching them onto surfaces. The proteins I use react with enzymes that cells make and can change the material properties (known as a responsive material). We hope that the relationship between the cells and the surface will lead to interesting cell and material behaviour that could make them a good choice to help deliver drugs (cells) to parts of the body/coatings for tissue implants/ a way to detect a disease.

I normally try to spend most of my day doing experiments. This can be in the lab, in the fume hood doing ‘wet’ chemistry or working on analysis instruments to characterise the surfaces I make, to ensure I have what I think I do (which isn’t always the case)! Each experiment can take up to 3 days so I tend to set them up in the morning and monitor them throughout the day until they’re completed. Setting up experiments involves weighing out the right amount of chemicals, getting the right volumes, making sure I have all the equipment, that it’s clean and to the right settings. Most of my work needs to be done under Nitrogen and at 0 degrees C. Once I have everything it’s a case of mixing it together and letting the chemistry do its thing. I spend some of my day reading literature on my subject, sometimes I have meetings with my supervisors and colleagues and often I have deadlines to meet for reports, conferences or presentations.