Profile

I like science, but I’m also quite lazy which is why I sign up to do this sort of thing instead of my actual job. I also like to avoid work by watching sport and eating food, often at the same time.

At the moment I’m working on lyme disease, which is carried by insects that live on mice, and occasionally bite humans too. I’m interested in how the disease-causing bacteria are able to survive in insects as well as mice and humans, because they’re all quite different.

In my old job I worked with a laser company to test whether their lasers could kill infections, so we could use them instead of antibiotics in hospitals. Their lasers didn’t work, but I still think there’s a way to do it. Before that we were helping a drugs company genetically modify a bacteria to make a drug cheaper.

I’ve also done some research into plastics that cells can’t stick to, which might be useful to stop medical devices getting infected. My first project was looking at how bacteria change when they start causing disease to see if we might be able to design an antibiotic to stop the changes.

I filmed everything I did for a day and uploaded it. There’s a better quality version here: https://youtu.be/oSwtdW53-Tc

(I did edit it down a bit)

Please don’t tell my boss I had my phone out in the lab.