Profile

When I was younger I didn’t want to be a scientist because I thought it was boring. As I got older, I realised I loved learning how things worked, especially things in our own bodies, minds and environments. I thought I wasn’t clever enough to study those things but turns out you just need to be really interested and inspired by them and then it just comes!

When I’m not studying things in the lab I think it’s really important to get outside in nature. I love walking and gravel biking and the Peak District is luckily on my doorstep! My friends and I also love identifying the mushrooms, birds and plants we find along the way which is pretty nerdy but makes the tough up-hill hikes more fun.

My cat Scampi is very cuddly which is great after a long day at work. We love chilling on the sofa watching things like RuPaul’s Drag Race, Ozark, Grand Designs and Money Heist.

I love Halloween (not sure Scampi does though…)

When we think about fungi a lot of think about mushrooms or things going mouldy. However, some fungi are so tiny we can’t see them. One of these is called Aspergillus fumigatus and you’re probably breathing in the spores it makes right now! Healthy people like you and me have healthy immune systems which easily kills the spores we breathe in so it doesn’t effect us. Unfortunately, people with immune systems which aren’t working as well can’t get rid of the spores so they can grow in their lungs and make them very sick, which is called Aspergillosis.

We need ways to kill Aspergillus fumigatus so that is doesn’t cause a life-threatening disease in sick people that breath it in. The aim of my PhD is to find new ways of killing Aspergillus fumigatus because there aren’t many available antimicrobials (drugs which kills microbes, like antibiotics). To make matters worse, the fungi can become resistant to the antimicrobials so it’s even harder to kill them. Therefore, it’s really important that we find new ways to cure people with Aspergillosis. I’m looking at Aspergillus fumigatus genes to see which ones are essential for it to live, when I find these, I can design drugs to target them to kill the fungi!

Some experiments take a few hours to run while others can take a few days to weeks, so there is a never a ‘normal’ day. That’s one of the best bits about working in science, that every day is different so you never get bored. Most of my time is spend in the lab doing experiments, but I also have to write detailed documents on how I designed and carried out those experiments, and what the results were.