Profile

So I was actually born in London, but only lived there for 2 years before moving to a small town in mid-Somerset. It’s a fairly rural area with not so many opportunities, so moving to Cardiff for my undergraduate degree was a big change! I now live in Edinburgh – it’s a lot colder than what I’m used to!

Although it’s difficult at the moment, I like to get out the house and do/see things around the city like museums, local comedy clubs, and concerts. I Support Leyton Orient FC so I often travel to watch them play, but I also like playing 5-a-side football.

I was the first person in my family to go to university, let alone do a PhD! I like to get involved with outreach schemes to show that people from any background or class can get into science.

So we know that there are lot of risk factors that can increase the chance of stroke e.g. smoking, lack of exercise, advanced age etc, but we don’t know the exact physiological mechanism that results in greater likelihood of strokes.

We know that for people that are very old or who smoke for example, an MRI of their brain will show evidence of diffuse vascular damage. One way the vessels become damaged is a breakdown of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) – the wall that encapsulates blood vessels in the brain, and protects blood-borne pathogens from infecting the brain’s sensitive tissue. A large part of my project is looking at the risk factors of stroke, and seeing how they relate to measures of BBB breakdown.

To best investigate how healthy the BBB is, we use a technique called contrast MRI, which is where we take several MR images before and after an injection of a contrast agent. If the BBB is broken, then this contrast agent will leak into the brain’s tissue, and we will see hotspots where we wouldn’t expect! However this technique is relatively new, and there’s plenty of kinks to work out to ensure that our measurements are accurate.

Most days I like to get up pretty early – around 6 – 6:30. I go the gym early (its always better in the morning) then head home, sort myself out, make lunch for the day, then head to my office around 9:30 – 10. I’m based in an office of other PhD students, so my working environment is fairly standard – not like people in the labs!

First thing is to check emails, answer anything quick or urgent, and then plan what needs to be done that day, or by the end of the week. What work I do each day varies but there’s usually a few common activities: read up on any recent literature or research that could be relevant, writing and preparing any presentations or papers, and lots of coding to process any data from our ongoing MRI study. There is often interesting seminars too that I like to attend, from visiting academics to tell us about their work, from other graduates that have gone to work in industry, or from others in the university to see what our colleagues are working on.

I normally leave the office around 6, but sometimes stay later if there’s an important deadline for a paper submission or conference. My office is quite social so we often hang out together after work, and head into town.