Meet the scientists!

I’m a clinician scientist interested in infection and lung disease.  After working for a few years as a children’s doctor, I am now spending more of my time trying to find out how some important bacteria cause infections and how we might be able to stop them.  Lots of bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics and so we need to find new ways to get rid of them.  This is the case for all infections but especially for people with cystic fibrosis where patients get infections in their lungs that sometimes cannot be cleared.  And every now and then I do a bit of doctoring on the side.

There’s not really a typical day, it depends on the type of experiment I’m doing.  In the morning I’ll take the bacteria out of the oven that have been growing overnight.  I’ll either use them in an experiment to learn more about how they communicate with each other and team up against us, or use them in an experiment trying to stop them!  Because bacteria take time to grow there’s then a bit of waiting.  I’ll look at the results of experiments that have finished and look to see what to do next.  In the rest of the time there’s some coffee and sometimes I’m involved in helping in other studies a the moment of one involving children that come into hospital with asthma.  At the end of the day I put the bacteria I’m going to use tomorrow into the oven, and every now and then go over the road to work for the evening in the Children’s Hospital.

People with cystic fibrosis (CF) often have chest infections that can easily be passed onto other people with CF.  This means that when they visit hospital they cannot chat to each other and are kept apart.  We ask people with other diseases what they think about research for their disease – so we should try to think about helping people with CF to  do the same, but in a ‘safe’ way.  Would an ‘online conference’ be appreciated – or any other ideas?