Profile

I live at home with my mum, dad, sister and our adorable cat Crystal. I also have two brothers (one of them is a baker and the other is a nurse).

I work helping people with cancer which has been a passion of mine for a while now. The main reason I chose to work in this field is because my mum first got breast cancer when I was about 12. I didn’t really know what it was then but I could see the impact it was having on my mum and the rest of my family. Thankfully my mum is in recovery now and doing well but it really inspired me to become a scientist. Luckily I really enjoyed science at school (and I was quite good at it) so it just kinda made sense to keep studying it and learn more about cancer.

We test both blood cancer from blood or bone marrow samples and solid cancer from biopsy samples. These are received into the lab and the requested tests are booked into our systems.

Our junior scientists then prepare the samples for testing by extracting DNA and RNA from the cells. They then set up the tests which range from simple reactions which take a couple of hours to full week processed which use our top-of-the-range robots.

Once the tests are complete, the results are sent to our senior scientists who interpret the results and report them onto our online patient database. Result interpretation is always checked by 2 scientists to make sure we are not making mistakes.

My job is a little different from everyone else because I’m a trainee which means I’m still learning. I’m on a 3-year trainee programme called the STP which stands for Scientific Training Programme. I get to go round different laboratories at the hospital learning what they all do, how it impacts the department I work for and, most importantly, how it impacts the patients.

I get to cycle to work which is great (unless it’s raining).

When I get to work I usually start by checking my emails, check my schedule for the day. I also like to write a to-do list of everything I need to complete for that day.

I’m a trainee so I’m always learning something new at work. I’m also completing a part-time masters which is fully funded by the NHS under my trainee programme. My research project is focused on extracting DNA and RNA from solid cancer tumours. From there, I sequence the samples to identify mutations in different genes which is causing the cancer.

Most days I also attend a multidisciplinary team meeting with lots of different healthcare professionals including doctors, research nurses and other scientists. In these meetings we discuss patient cases, test results for these patients and how that impacts the treatment they’ll receive.