Profile
Sam Smith
My CV
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Education:
Wanstead High School (left 2006), City University (Psychology β 2006-2009), University College London (MSc Health Psychology β 2009-2010), University College London (PhD Psychology β 2010-2013)
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Qualifications:
BSc, MSc, PhD, CPsychol, MBPss and I swam 100 metres without armbands once!
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Work History:
A terrible bar in Angel, University College London, Northwestern University in Chicago, Queen Mary University of London. I also worked at Harvard University for a bit last year.
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Current Job:
Cancer Research UK Postdoctoral Fellow
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About Me:
I live in London (but not for much longer!) and play lots of sports, eat lots of food, and have lots of fun in this great city!
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Read more
I live in Leeds with my wife and two kittens (Ned and Maude β named after our favourite characters from the Simpsons).
I enjoy sports, mainly squash, golf and bouldering (indoor rock climbing). I spend my time going out with friends, watching movies / tv and seeing all the great things there are to do in LYorkshire!
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I am a behavioural scientist, also known as a psychologist, with an interest in how humans behave. I am particularly interested in the behaviours that we do to maintain our health, such as smoking, drinking alcohol, eating fruit and vegetables and exercise. This isnβt because Iβm really good at doing these things myself (!), but because these behaviours are linked with health outcomes, such as cancer. We think that up to 40% of all cancers that people get are because of the way we live our lives and the environments we live in. If we could change all those things, we could stop up to 135,000 cancers from ever happening. This is an ambitious goal, but itβs why I get out of bed in the morning!
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My Typical Day:
Entering and analysing data, discussing findings with colleagues, writing reports and presenting to big audiences.
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This is a tough one, because my day varies quite a lot. Some of the things that I regularly do are to enter and analyse data, usually from questionnaires returned to me by members of the public. We also collect information using methods like one-to-one interviews, focus groups and online forums; anywhere where people are discussing their behaviour is a place I like to collect data from! So my day may be speaking with people and trying to understand what they think about a particular topic. Because we get so much information, I canβt always make sense of it by myself. So I will also spend time speaking with colleagues about my findings, many of whom have expertise in specialist areas such as statistics, experiments and genetics. Scary stuff if you ask me, so Iβm glad we can work together. When we get to a stage where we are pretty confident that our findings are accurate, we will present the new information at small and large meetings of colleagues from other departments and universities. This can be quite intimidating, but also a lot of fun. Particularly if your new findings are interesting and exciting! I usually give about one presentation a week.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Passionate, enthusiastic and focussed
What did you want to be after you left school?
A sport psychologist
What don't you like about your current job?
Admin and paper work. yuck
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