Profile
Jessica Forsyth
My CV
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Education:
The Green School for Girls (for GCSE’s and sixth form)
The University of Exeter (for Undergraduate and Masters degree) -
Qualifications:
GCSE’s – 10 A-A*
A-levels – Biology (A*), Geography (A) and English Literature (A)
Undergraduate degree (BSc) – 1st class degree -
Work History:
Seasonal sales assistant at Monsoon Accesorize (summer job)
Front of House Team Member at The Hummingbird Bakery (1 year)
Seasonal sales assistant at Stevensons (summer job)
Insectary technician at the University of Exeter (currently been doing for 8 months) -
Current Job:
I currently work as a part-time insectary technician at the University of Exeter. I do this alongside carrying out a full-time masters by research degree.
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About Me:
I’m a masters by research student (MRes) at the University of Exeter. I moved down to Cornwall to study my undergraduate degree 5 years ago and love living by the sea.
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I currently live in Cornwall as that’s where I go to university but my home is in London. At home I have a golden retriever dog called ‘Cooper’ who is five years old. I completed my undergraduate degree in Cornwall a couple of years ago and then had a year out of education to help me decide what career path I wanted to follow. After a year of working and a bit of travelling abroad, I decided I wanted to return to carry out a postgraduate research degree. This is slightly different to a taught degree as you don’t have any lectures or lessons, you just get on with your own project which you work on fairly independently. My idea of what I wanted to do has changed a lot since I left school. I left school thinking I wanted to work with animals in some way, so was running with the idea of becoming a zookeeper. After three years of a Zoology degree where I was exposed to lots of new and interesting subject areas I’ve ended up working in the field of microbiology. I still get to work with living things but much smaller living things than I’d expected (I wanted to work with elephants originally but now I work with tiny bacteria!). In my spare time I enjoy swimming in the sea and sometimes give surfing a go when I’m feeling brave enough.
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My research focuses on the problem of antibiotic resistance, a topic I’ve always been really interested in, and the eventual outcome of my work is to provide a sustainable solution to this problem. We are incredibly reliant on antibiotics in everyday life whether we realise it or not. They are used in agriculture and food production as well as in healthcare to prevent and treat infections. Bacteria are living things and they don’t want to die, so when they are exposed to antibiotics, which act precisely to kill them, it encourages them to come up with ways to avoid this happening. If it is successful and is able to survive antibiotic treatment then we refer to this bacteria as ‘antibiotic resistant’. If you are infected with one of these strains and you become unwell it then becomes very hard to treat you and make you better. Antibiotics are one of histories greatest discoveries. My research is trying to ensure that we can benefit from their use for many more years to come. Specifically I’m investigating whether we can use bacteriophages to treat antibiotic resistant infections. The word bacteriophage translates directly to ‘bacteria eater’ and that is exactly what they do, they eat, and kill, bacteria. I am working towards the goal of finding bacteriophages that are able to specifically kill resistant bacteria so that the infection can be treated with antibiotics as usual. In the image below you can see an example of a bacteriophage that has eaten resistant bacteria. The square plates have a lawn of resistant bacteria that has been incubated so that it grows all over the plate. The clear circles that you can see are where I have added a spot of liquid that contains bacteriophages and they have been able to eat the bacteria which leaves behind a nice clear patch of agar (this is nutrient material that the bacteria survive off and what we grow them on).
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My Typical Day:
I get up and walk up to the university campus. I have a part-time job looking after insects (different types of moths) which involves feeding them and collecting their eggs. Eventually these insects are used in scientific experiments. I also go into the lab to work on my own project which involves working with bacteria known as E. coli. These bacteria live inside our stomachs and can sometimes make us unwell.
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As a research student with a part-time job as an insectary technician i have to balance my time between the two. My job as an insectary technician involves maintaining populations of insects (mainly different species of moths) that are used by other researchers to carry out experiments. I have to go into a room that is kept at around 24 degrees celsius and carry out several tasks such as collecting the eggs that have been laid and keeping the moths adequately fed. This role involves a lot of communication as i have to liase with researchers to determine how many insects they require for experiments and make sure i have enough insects ready. This job has given me some really good practical experience in an area of science that isn’t directly related to my own field of research. Gaining experience in different areas is a great way to demonstrate to future employers that you are flexible and have gone out of your way to learn as many new skills as possible. When it comes to a typical day for my masters project, it usually involves a combination of practical lab work, computer work and communicating with my supervisors and colleagues via email or on Microsoft Teams. One of the main reasons I love what I do is that ‘my typical day’ is quite hard to describe as no day is ever the same. I find this variety really refreshing. Some days I will be working in the lab so i get up and get ready for the day. I then check my emails to make sure there are no meetings i need to attend. When I get to work I ready through my lab book which will be where i have written out a detailed plan for the experiment I will be conducting. This plan often involves diagrams so that it is easy to understand when I have to return to read it in a month or a years time. I’ll then get all my equipment ready and get started. But I’m not in the lab all the time….The project I’m working on aims to see whether we can use bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, to remove harmful bacteria from our stomachs. In the early days of my project, a typical day involved travelling to different places where i would sample sewage material. For example, I took a trip to a local farm where I waited a couple of hours for the pigs to do their first poo of the morning (See pictures below!). Then I jumped in with them and scooped it all up to take back to the lab! I then tested whether the poo contained the viruses we are looking for. To do this we pipette tiny spots of pig poo onto a layer of bacteria and warm them up to encourage them to grow. If there are viruses present in the sample then we see clear circular patterns appear.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I would use it to aid the Cornwall Science Community (CSC) in the organisation of further outreach events. The CSC is an organisation I volunteer for as an article writer.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Curious, Independent and Kind
What did you want to be after you left school?
A Zookeeper
Were you ever in trouble at school?
No!
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Oasis
What's your favourite food?
Lasagne
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
To discover something really exciting in my career, To always be happy in life and To have a happy and healthy family!
Tell us a joke.
What is E.T. short for? He's got short legs!
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