• Question: who have u worked with?? what have u made?? has anything gone wrong?? what bad descisions have u made?? what are u working on now??

    Asked by katecourtney to Claire, Greg, Jane, Jo, Nuruz, Vicki on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Vicki Onions

      Vicki Onions answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Hi kate
      Oh, i have worked with lots of great people! And have made loads of great friends. One of the sad things about science is that you start hero-worshipping certain scientists who are important in your field, but no one else would really have heard of them! So if i was to say to you that i had worked with Bob Webb and Daivd Baird – i get a bit star struck around them, but no one else would have a clue who they were!!!
      What have i made?? – Usually a bit of a mess!!
      Has anything gone wrong?? I’m afraid most of what i do goes wrong the first time! The worst thing that has gone wrong was we had a buig study to do which involved a LOT of work and then 2 months afterwards i realsied i had misunderstood something and had used the wrong media to freeze the ovaries in and so everything was useless! It was AWFUL 🙁
      Bad decisions…..not catastrophic ones no…i tend to check a lot of things i do before i do them….apart from the example above – DOH!!
      What am i working on now? – at the moment i am trying to see if the rate with which we perfuse the “anti-freeze” media throug hthe ovaries affects the way the blood vessels that both supply the ovary and also the tiny ones actually inside the ovary work, and whether if we push it through too fast, it damages the endothelial cell layer of the artery

    • Photo: Greg FitzHarris

      Greg FitzHarris answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Lots can go wrong!!!

      because we are doing ecxperiments that no-one has done before… it can be a bit difficult sometimes. Sometimes it can take a long time (weeks or months) to work out exactly how an experiment needs to be done to get the best quality and mst reliable answer to the question youre interested in. That process ofworking it out can be very frustrating… btu its a great feeling when you finally et it right and answer the question

    • Photo: Claire O'Donnell

      Claire O'Donnell answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      Well done Kate 5 questions in 1! I’m having to txt as my internet is broken so I’ll have to be fairly brief or I won, get to anyone else 😉
      The thing about scientists is that they tend to be in the backgroud generally and so even the really eminent ones tend not to be famous except if they’ve been on the telly. I did work with some people from the government on the IVF work and that was erm…. Interesting!
      Things go wrong all the time in science and working out what went wrong and why is how you make discoveries
      I don’t think I’ve made any bad decisions that affect patients but occasionally I’ve made the wrong decision on how to handle a situation, happily though you can usually sort that out.
      Right now I’m working on the way we organise services for people who need operations on their blood vessels. It looks like they could be better; I can’t add web links when I’m answering by txt like this but I answered a question like this before when my computer was working so if you find that one you could follow the link to a newspaper article that says more about it if you’re interested 🙂

    • Photo: Jane Cleal

      Jane Cleal answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      I haven’t worked with anyone famous, but Robert Winston came and saw one of my experiments and so did Princess Anne!
      I collect human placentas which are the thing that attaches the baby in the womb and provides it with food form the mum. I basically work out how the placenta feeds the baby in the womb so that the baby can grow properly.
      Of course things go wrong! sometimes I drop things and make a terible mess and sometimes experiments just don’t work. One time I spent all day doing an experiment and forgot to print the results off the computer and they were not saved! I lost them all and was so embarassed!

Comments

  • Photo: katecourtney

    katecourtney commented on :

    thanks for your answers!
    they have really helped!!
    just wondering; what specific charities are you going to donate your prize money to if you win??
    what would it mean to you if you won???
    how would winning help your science career??
    thanks kate and courtney 😀