Profile

One of my favourite things to do outside of the lab is climbing – I go 2-3 times a week! Unfortunately, London does not have many mountains so all of my climbing is now indoors but I started climbing outside in Yorkshire and Northumberland around 10 years ago.

I also ride motorcycles – much more fun than driving! In the past I have abseiled, ghyll scrambled (climing up/jumping off waterfalls) and skydived a few times.

When I’m not doing something adventurous, I can be found playing the guitar – mainly rock and blues. I seem to be addicted as I currently own 6 guitars!

I’m not a stereotypical scientist (as you can see) and I come from a working class background in the North East of England.

My research has spanned many different model organisms from fruit flies during my PhD to mice during my postdoc work. I have also worked with human samples (knees and lungs) in the past. I have also worked with different aspects of the immune system. The immune system has two “arms” – the innate and adaptive responses. My initial work focussed on cells in the innate immune system called macrophages which are present in many organisms, including us and the fruit fly! I then moved to the adaptive immune system to work on T cells. I now combine the two systems and work on how the innate immune system instructs the adaptive immune system.

I’m also very active in the open-access space (promoting the free access to scientific research) and created a podcast, Preprints in Motion, to futher this. I interview PhD students, postdocs and open-access leaders to find out about their recent work and experiences working in academia.

During lockdown, I initiated research investigating how we were communicating COVID-19 research and its quality. This is known as “meta-research” which is research on research. As a result of this work I’ve been interviewed by journalists, spoken at academic conferences and even been on the radio. Our work has been featured in outlets from Buzzfeed to Forbes.

If I am doing an experiment where I’m on the microscope this can typcially take up my whole day. This involves sitting in a dark room (usually playing music on the speakers) while I take images of different tissues that have been prepared the day before.

If I am doing lab work, this is normally staining cells (using antibodies that bind to specific targets so we can visualise these with a microscope) before performing analyses. In this case, I am in the lab most of the day but will also analyse data from previous days and prepare presentations. I also meet with my supervisor to update him on our progress, plan out the next week and discuss what we are doing.

Because I am an unusual postdoc who also has an independent research programme, I often do additional activities in the evening after work. This mainly involves coding (R) and analysing data with collaborators. I may also have meetings as I work with people around the world. After analysing the data we then write a paper which can take a few weeks to get just right.