• Question: Why did you find science and specifically this topic so appealing to make you want to become a scientist?

    Asked by anon-185981 to Verity, Trystan, Raquel, Danny, Catherine, Andy on 6 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Danny Ward

      Danny Ward answered on 6 Nov 2018:

      I gradually found the area of science that really interested me throughout my A-levels and university. Once i got a flavour of multiple areas of science, I started to gain a deeper fascination in molecular microbiology and disease. It was one of my strongest topics at university, I was really interested in it, it has many real-word benefits of working on and the job prospects are good.

    • Photo: Verity Hill

      Verity Hill answered on 6 Nov 2018:

      I love knowing the answers to things that you see in every day life, which is partly what drew me to biology in the first place. That made me choose it at university! Once I was at university, I studied lots of things, some that I found interesting and some which I didn’t. I found simulating disease outbreaks with maths very interesting because it was so neat and elegant, and you could find answers to things that seemed almost impossible to find answers to!
      Also, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was ongoing through all of my undergraduate degree, and I was so horrified by it, and I knew that I wanted to do something to stop an outbreak like that from happening again. I wanted to do something that would help people that are neglected by medical science (and sometimes society), so I focussed on so-called “Neglected Tropical Diseases” which tend to be less researched because there is less money in them.

    • Photo: Trystan Leng

      Trystan Leng answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      I found science appealing because I like to understand how things work, I like to learn new things, and I like to solve puzzles. I study infectious disease specifically because I wanted to researching something that would help people. My research focuses on the control of infectious diseases – if less people get infectious diseases, more people live happy, healthy, and long lives!

    • Photo: Raquel Medialdea Carrera

      Raquel Medialdea Carrera answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      I have always liked science. Science can be so so so fascinating!!! 🙂
      I always thought that it was amazing that very small microbes such as Virus or Bacteria could cause so much damage and kill so many people!
      Then, I was lucky enough to deploy to Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak and help people there. That was amazing! 🙂 I loved it. Since then, I knew I wanted to work with Epidemics.
      If you want to learn more about the largest Ebola Outbreak ever that affected Africa in 2014 and 2015, you can watch this video here:

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