Profile

I look at the DNA of people and help people understand why some people have a rare disease. DNA is super cool, and just like your fingerprint, everyone’s DNA looks a little bit different.

These differences in the DNA are why some people got curly hair or big feet, its what makes you look different from your friends!

But sadly, sometimes it’s these differences in DNA that can lead to rare diseases and we don’t know why these happen and how to treat these patients. That’s what I do!

I decided I wanted to become a researcher because I have always been interested in helping people understand more about themselves. So right now, I’ll be studying for my PhD (or a DPhil – as we call it here in Oxford) so that I can work towards becoming a researcher and helping as many people as I can.

I absolutely love my ride through the pretty city of Oxford before getting to work, although I do admit I hate going up the hill!

But fortunately you get to see really old buildings (like the ones below). Sometimes I like to work and write in these when I can.

When I get to our lab, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to make the best of the day. I usually spend a good half an hour doing this to make sure I am on the right track.

I am a computational scientist, which means that unlike my colleagues, I don’t actually work in a lab with experiments. All of my work is done on my laptop. However, the cool thing is that we have access to super computers (they got 7000 cores, imagine how many games it could run at once!). But instead of running games, we run experiments on data that our friends from all over the world have collected and graciously shared with all of us.

I spend the rest of the day doing a whole bunch of different tasks like : reading or writing papers, passionately arguing with my co-workers on a problem that we are working on, meeting with my amazing boss, Dr. Nicky Whiffin and of course having lunch and load of tea and coffee with everyone together at one table.

I head home at about 4-5pm and, my favourite part of my day is going down the hill super fast!