• Question: what made you decide to become a scientist?

    Asked by anon-195232 on 3 Jan 2019. This question was also asked by anon-195223, anon-195243, anon-195220, anon-195231, , anon-195343, anon-195730, anon-195867, anon-195769.
    • Photo: Ed Morrison

      Ed Morrison answered on 3 Jan 2019:

      At school I enjoyed many subjects, but maths, science and English most of all.

      When I was 17 and thinking about university, I read a book called The Selfish Gene by Dawkins. It changed my view of things and persuaded me to study biology instead of law at university.

      Once at university I just really enjoyed particular subjects and focused on them until I found an area to pursue as a career.

    • Photo: Tomas Fitzgerald

      Tomas Fitzgerald answered on 3 Jan 2019:

      Science and maths were my favourite subjects at school and they were also the subjects that where I got the highest marks. I settled on Molecular Biology as a University degree as i considered it to be a combination of Biology and Chemistry (my two favourite subjects). At the time was not aware of the big changes in technology that would accelerate genetic research and result in the massive datasets we all enjoy today. Genetics is the area of bioinformatics were i have the most experience but biology and informatics are huge subject areas and i still very much enjoy exploring other domains. My original degree thesis was based on a project using x-ray crystallography to explore the structure of a enzyme and cofactor for which i spent many happy hours attempting to co-crystallise in the lab.

    • Photo: Gemma Chandratillake

      Gemma Chandratillake answered on 3 Jan 2019:

      I like understanding why things are the way they are!

    • Photo: Reka Nagy

      Reka Nagy answered on 4 Jan 2019:

      My family! Some of my family members studied chemistry, while other do engineering – so I was always surrounded by people with inquisitive minds, who like building things. I read a lot of science books as a child and I was fascinated by how stuff works – especially the human body.

      In high school, I studied genetics for the first time and I was gripped by the idea that we have these genetic blueprints (DNA) inside of us that (at least partially) determine who we are, what we look and behave like, and what diseases we may be predisposed to. I wanted to know more, which is why I continued to study biology and genetics at university of 8 years – and I am now continuing to work within this field, with the aim of using genetics to find new drug targets that could be used to treat some diseases for which cures do not exist yet!

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