Profile

I moved out of London 2 years ago to live in the countryside and start my job at the University of Cambridge.  I like to travel and explore, cook healthy food and mess around with my friends . When I’m not in the lab you’ll usually find me at the swimming pool, walking with my fiance or at the supermarket-I genuinely love food shopping!

Have you ever had black snot after a long day in London? That’s a sign that your lungs are fighting against pollution from the air that you’ve breathed in.

Scientists know that air pollution is bad for our lungs but they aren’t really sure why…

My job is to find out what our lungs do after that day in London, when they have come across lots of pollution.

I do this in the lab by sprinkling pollution onto pieces of lung and watching what they do next or asking volunteers for blood or urine samples after they have been exposed naturally.

I start my experiments early in the morning by adding pollution to pieces of lung.  After a few hours (and several green teas!)  I dust off the pollution and see how the lung is.

This is the cool part of my job because it’s different every day. Sometimes I measure how unhealthy the lung is (or if it’s died even!) other days I check whether it can still do its jobs properly.

The best days are when I add bacteria to the experiments too – pollution stops the lungs from getting rid of bugs. That’s one of the reasons we get chest infections!