Profile

I love following recipes, turning raw ingredients into wonderful new creations. This goes for in the kitchen as well as in the lab! And it is this small passion of mine that lead me on my career path as a research scientist. I live in Leeds and work at the University of Sheffield, trying to understand how kidneys work in health and disease. I live with my boyfriend who is also a research scientist, so we often get weird looks on the bus when people over hear our complex conversations!

I look at a type of Kidney Disease called ADPKD, which is when someone develops cysts in their kidneys. Cysts are like little balloon sacks filled with fluid which can grow to a pretty large size and take over the kidneys and stop them from functioning properly. Certain patients get this disease as they have a particular gene which is mutated (ill) and can therefore not work as it normally should.

I am researching into different proteins within the kidney to see how they function normally, and what happens to them when a patient has ADPKD to try and understand the relationship of the proteins and how they are important for normal kidney function.

Research uses up a lot of brain power! I am constantly thinking and wondering about many different things.

On a typical day I will arrive at work, lift some reagents out of the fridge or freezer to warm up and go and make a coffee and have my breakfast while I wait. I will then fill in my lab book with protocols of the experiments I wish to complete that day. Once everything is ready I will begin my experiments and make notes of anything important throughout the day.

Some days I do not have any experiments to perform, so instead I do some reading as it is important to keep up to date with all the research that is going on within your ‘field’ – which basically means all the kidney research from across the world. I also put aside some time to analyse my results, as well as plan future experiments.