• Question: Were you always interested in immunity or did you "stumble" into this field?

    Asked by Mrs W to Carmen, Daniel, Laura, Noel, Steph on 6 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Noel Carter

      Noel Carter answered on 6 Mar 2015:

      To be honest I am not really an immunologist. I am in this zone because my research interest is in transplantion so Immunology is a big part of my research, but I wouldn’t say I am a classic immunologist. I would call myself a molecular or cell biologist. I am work on cells and the molecules in the cells such as proteins, DNA and RNA.

      I did kind of stumble into it. I did a degree in genetics then went to Newcastle to do a PhD in embryo development. However this didn’t work out and I ended up doing my PhD on sequencing the DNA of a bacteria called Bacillus subtilis. After that I went to work in an immunology laboratory to work on transplantation and that is where I have carried on from. So yeah I kind of have stumbled into it really.

    • Photo: Stephanie Dyson

      Stephanie Dyson answered on 8 Mar 2015:

      I very much stumbled into the field. I am actually a Mathematician pretending to be a scientist but I have always been interested in mathematical or computational biology. I think it is amazing that something as complicated as an immune response can be represented by a relatively small number of rules applied to a small number of cell types. Especially when there is actually a lot that we (as scientists) don’t know about how these cells work. A lot of the time I have to model certain cell behaviours based on our best guess of how it works and if we get the results we expected from the model we assume that our guess was correct but we never really know for sure.

    • Photo: Carmen Denman

      Carmen Denman answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      Hello Mrs W.,

      I always was fascinated by infectious disease from a young age (maybe somewhat morbid to share but it is true!). Once I’d found out about the ‘black death’ and the flu pandemic, cholera in London, I was hooked on how disease caused by invisible little things we cannot see can wipe out so many so quickly. It feels like a constant race against time scientists vs. bacteria/virus to figure out and adapt to beat the bug. There is unlimited amount of information we don’t know- and I always said I didn’t want to have a boring job! 🙂 Never a dull moment.
      Cheers,
      Carmen

    • Photo: Laura Garcia Ibanez

      Laura Garcia Ibanez answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      I have always been interested in “biomedical research” but I really sumble into this field. A few years ago, when my research career started, I was really interested about cancer and I realised how the immune system takes a big part in it, so I followed the lead and now I am fascinated by it.

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