Profile – Secondary 11

Education

Malmesbury Secondary School, Wiltshire (2001 – 2008)
Qualifications

Cambridge University, Physiology and Neuroscience (2008-2011)
Work History

I worked on a cow farm for a bit! And now I help teach biology to younger students at the Uni.
Current Job

Masters student
Employer

Cambridge University

Favourite thing to do in my job:

There’s nothing like the moment when you look at your results and realise that you have just discovered something that no-one else in the entire world knows!
My Work

I look into how the conditions in the womb affect a baby’s chance of getting heart disease as an adult
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What your mother ate, how much oxygen she got and how stressed she was when she was pregnant with you can affect how likely you are to get heart disease in 50-60 years time! I look into how this happens, and if we can make medicines to give to babies which will protect them from these nasty diseases!
My Typical Day:

Playing around with equipment and making up experiments to see what I can discover!
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Cycle to the lab, mess around setting up equipment, run an experiment or two, look at the results, eat a lot of biscuits, have a think about what to do the next day, head home.
What I'd do with the prize money:

Use it to show school children how cool science can be!
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Devise programs to get students more involved in science – almost all the experiments done in schools are experiments which have been done before and the answers are already known! This misses out a lot of the fun – I’d like to get school children involved more in finding out things no-one knows about! This could be done both by taking experiments into schools, or by arranging for the students to visit Universities.

My Interview
- Tell us a joke.
  
  Why don’t scientists have doorbells? Because they all want to win a No-bell prize!

Katie Skeffington