Get an insight into their work and how they started out
As much as it’s important to look back on the discoveries that have been made, it’s equally valuable to look to the present day and see the research, experiments, and work going into making the discoveries of the future. To get a sense of how today’s scientists are pushing science and technology forward, Google Arts & Culture teamed up with the Science Museum, London, to talk to five scientists about the exciting and innovative projects they’re currently working on.
Featured in the videos are: Alex Lathbridge who's studying novel ways of preventing cancer; Jess Wade who is trying to pioneer new wearable tech; Yewande Akinola whose project is all about sustainable cities and water reuse; Farah Ahmed who’s focusing on using x-rays to look inside objects in a non-destructive way; and Ying Lia Li who’s interested in developing new sensors that could enhance how we detect all manner of phenomena, from changes in the Earth's gravitational field to the movement of cells in the body.
As well as getting to grips with their work, we also asked the scientists a series of questions to get to know them a bit better. From career advice to who they’d like to invite to their fantasy dinner, get a look inside the mind of a scientist in today’s world.
Dr Jess Wade
What’s the best thing about what you do?
The best thing is the people I work with. Academic science is a total privilege – you are surrounded by the most enthusiastic and curious people from all over the world and together you try and solve different challenges. No day is the same, no experiment boring. The worst part is emails.
Can you share a story about your experiences as a young female scientist?
At a ‘women in physics’ event in CERN a white, male professor said: “physics was invented by men”, and that women only got academic positions in physics due to tokenism. LOL, pick your audiences buddy. Other than that, I’ve always been incredibly well supported in academic science. I’ve been super lucky to have great teachers, a supportive scientific family, and a wonderful research group.
If you weren’t doing your current job, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
I’d be a chef. I’m fascinated by the science of cooking and how much psychology and environment matter when you are eating food. I also like art – I was at art school before I started physics at Imperial, and still do little illustrations when I find time.
What in your view is one of the coolest pieces of research or innovation going on in science today that you find particularly amazing?
Biosensors! I work on organic (carbon-based) electronic materials. They’re neat because they can transport electrons and holes (charged particles), but they can also transport ions, which makes them neat for heaps of biology.
Who would be on your guest list for a fantasy dinner party?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot – I like dinners and people. Some people here I know, and could listen to forever, but some I don’t, and mostly I’d just like to see them all in one place. So far: Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Angela Saini, Nimko Ali, Tabitha Goldstaub, Jameela Jamil, Cat Alman, Gladys West, Sinead Griffin, Joy Buolamwini, Maryam Zaringhalam, Wendy Hall, Sharmadean Reid, Hannah Fry, Kim Cobb, and Roma Agrawal.
Dr Farah Ahmed
What first sparked your interest in the world of imaging and x-rays?
I was completely inspired by two academics, Prof Jim Elliott who invented micro-computed tomography, and Prof Graham Davis who made understanding science really easy, especially during my PhD. Communicating science well is critical to the understanding and expansion of any scientific development, I was very lucky to have been advised and supported by such amazing academics.
What do you think is one of the coolest things that’s been done with this technology?
This technology has enabled scientists and engineers of all disciplines to better understand their problems and better design products that we use in our everyday lives. I find it fascinating when old and ancient objects are scanned using this technology as you are almost reinventing history by learning more about such objects. What’s even more fascinating is scanning objects from outer space, such as Martian meteorites. Being able to study the planet Mars on Earth has to be one of the coolest projects I have ever got involved in.
Do you ever feel the pressure to be a role model in your field? Or is it something you’ve embraced?
I feel very humbled to be recognized as a role model. I feel very strongly about being able to support and inspire those from less privileged backgrounds. I would like to think that my work encourages more women and less privileged individuals into STEM subjects.
What’s the importance of sharing your work with the scientific community? Do you ever worry about protecting your ideas?
In my opinion, true science is that which benefits us all. Sharing knowledge and exchanging ideas is a fundamental part of best practice in science. Having an idea can be a very individualistic concept but taking that idea into some form of reality is always achieved by good teamwork and lots of smart people coming together. I am a firm believer of a collaborative approach.
Who would be on your guestlist for a fantasy dinner party?
This is really difficult, I would love to have Prof Jim Elliott, inventor of micro-computed tomography; Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield, inventor of the medical CT scanner; and Nobel prize winner and Dr Wilhelm Röntgen, who discovered x-rays. I am sure collectively they would have come up with some amazing ideas – more amazing than the ones they’ve already had!
Yewande Akinola
How did you end up working on creative sustainable systems for cities?
I've always been interested in cities and buildings pretty much from when I was in primary school. I used to spend hours on end building models of my dream house and buildings I thought would be a more comfortable and inspiring living space. I grew up in a developing country; all around me I saw a need for improvement, whether it was water supply or the conditions of the buildings.
Just before I started applying to universities, I was trying to work out what to apply for and my mum said: ”why don't you try engineering? With engineering you would be able to design water supply systems and power systems for people all over the world.” And that was the start of it. I soon found out that designing for developing countries works on the basis of being sustainable and I've been able to transfer and translate that understanding of developing countries to being able to create sustainable systems for cities.
What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?
I've received lots of advice at different points in my career, but the one piece of advice that has stuck with me is "just go for it". Even if you think you haven't got all the pieces together, as long as you have the ambition, the drive, and the passion, go for it! All the dots will connect somehow.
Do you think it's important to have career heroes, people to aspire to? Who has been most influential to your career path?
Definitely, it's so important to have people to aspire to. I have been so blessed to have incredible people in my career and people around me- they are people who have achieved the impossible, who have invented things, have been able to overcome lots of the challenges that are out there in the engineering industry, and diversity challenges as well. The most influential I'd have to say is my first boss, David George. He showed me how to express creativity in engineering and showed me the importance of that. That has pretty much shaped my career and how I view and take on challenges.
What do you see as the role of creativity within engineering?
Engineering is all about creativity and I think that's the exciting thing. It's about expressing your creativity and that’s limitless because it’s all about how one can improve people's lives. Being creative is the one element that if people have, they can be engineers. Some people say, "oh I'm not good at maths" and my question is always, "are you creative?" If the answer is yes, you can be an engineer! Yes, you do have to have a basic understanding of maths and the sciences, but creativity is what will keep your engineering interesting and beautiful.
If you could live in any building which would it be and why?
I've got a thing for super high-rise buildings and I'm not sure why. I think it's because they're such amazing machines if you think about everything that happens in them. So if I could live in any building, it would be the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. I would absolutely love that because every night on the outside of the building, there's a nice projection with different colors and different music and it looks absolutely fantastic. Of course, when the next tallest building in the world pops up, I would be packing up and moving in there.
Alex Lathbridge
What brought you to a career in science?
At school, I really loved chemistry because it allowed me to understand reactions on an atomic level. I also loved biology because I really loved learning how the body functions and how systems in animals and plants work. You can imagine how amazed I was that biochemistry was a thing that people could do. During my degree, it was brilliant to understand how processes occurred on a molecular level and how that led to very real things that we see everyday. Imagine my surprise when I learned that you could also use computers to help this kind of work and this is what my undergraduate research project focused on. I thought that this intersection of biology, chemistry, mathematics, and computer science was amazing so I decided that it was what I wanted to research further.
Your current work focuses on cancer prevention techniques, what got you involved in this specific area?
There's a lot of focus on "cancer research" within biosciences, so there is a really wide variety of research topics that are linked in some way to it. I was really interested in work that would let me improve on skills that I already had. I really enjoyed using computational work to support traditional lab research so I was really fortunate to find a project for my PhD that let me do that. Between coding software, running simulations, and testing them in the lab, I've been able to expand my skillset massively.
You do a lot of public-facing work through performances and comedy, why do you think communicating science in this way is effective? How did you first discover your talent for stand up?
I think it boils down to this: making something funny makes it memorable. I like telling stories and making people laugh. It just so happens that part of my life is my research so part of my comedy is too. Thanks to Steve Cross – a brilliant comedian who put together an amazing mentoring scheme called The Science Showoff Talent Factory – I learned how to improve in both comedy and communicating science through training, workshops, and just doing as many gigs as possible.
What was the drive behind starting Minorities In STEM in 2017? What have you learnt along the way?
There are so many great online communities for ethnic minority scientists – my favorite is #BLACKANDSTEM – but most of them are US based. Minorities in STEM was started because we really wanted to create a space where we could mutually support ethnic minority people in the UK who study or work or research in STEM (without every science organization or institution trying to get us to solve their diversity problems for them). It's brilliant because we've been able to learn about the lives of so many people in STEM and show them that they aren't alone in this space. Along the way, we've learnt that it's really important to highlight to people in STEM that grouping every non-white person as one homogenous group is dangerous – as a lot of the behavior that people default to ends up as "oh I know one Black person – everything is fine"
What in your view is one of the coolest pieces of research or innovation that you find particularly amazing that’s going on in science today?
I think work being done with CRISPR is really fascinating. It's amazing that we're pushing the frontiers of genetic research and really trying to understand how we can modify things at such a tiny – yet important – level. It will be incredible to see how this line of research develops in the future and what impact it will have on society.
Would you rather win a Nobel Prize or headline the Edinburgh Fringe?
How many Nobel Laureates have had a Netflix special? Exactly.
Dr Ying Lia Li
How do you describe what you do to new people?
I’m super lucky that a large part of my research is making optical sensors that can be used in everyday life. The ones that detect motion operate on the same principles as the sensors in your phone; and those work using the physics you learn at A-level so I usually start from there. Even if you hated A-level physics, there’s a lot of intuition from your own body – for example, have you ever felt yourself jerk forward when a car or train suddenly breaks? That’s the effect of an inertial force that causes your body to move during deceleration, the faster you decelerate or accelerate, the greater that impulse - it’s exactly how the sensors operate too. The key to describing my work is to reassure people that there are no stupid questions!
Can you share a story about your experiences as a young female scientist?
I often get pangs of imposter syndrome – a strong feeling or belief that I’m not smart enough for my job or I simply don’t belong. Sometimes this is made worse when people mistake me for a secretary or coffee maker. But growing a bit older and having a great support network has helped with this – I have a thick shell now (and pink hair!) so the last few years I’ve made my voice louder and clearer. One highlight was being invited to be a panel member (the only female one) for a discussion on commercializing quantum technology, which felt pretty great as my opinions were seen as equal to those belonging to a Google scientist as well as founders of spin-outs and start-ups.
When did your fascination with lasers start?
As a child of the ‘90s and ‘00s I grew up watching a lot of sci-fi movies and TV shows. You’d think that Star Wars would be a major inspiration for lasers, but it was actually the X-Files that got me hooked (and I had a huge girl crush on Dr. Dana Scully). This is because lightsabers can’t be made out of a laser! (Many years later I did a talk on this very topic titled “stop asking me for a lightsaber”). In the X-Files, the lasers are featured in the same applications that they are used in real life, for example, laser surgery or satellite operations (although in X-Files they always ended up killing people with them).
I got truly hooked on lasers during my masters project – it was the first time in my undergraduate degree that I got to use one, and even better, I had to make it first. I’d always thought of a laser as a mystical black box so being forced to build one from scratch was an eye-opening experience.
You’ve spoken on Twitter about the network you’ve built up. What are the benefits of having this kind of community around you?
I got back into Twitter two years ago after finishing my PhD when I suddenly realized all my fellow PhD friends had left and I was starting my postdoc journey semi-alone. There happens to be an amazing set of academic tweeters who are the most down-to-Earth people I’ve ever met. They’ll tweet when things go wrong, or when they receive a brutal takedown by Reviewer 2, or if they’re stressed – the stuff that makes us human. This can be critical to helping understand academic politics, how funding really works, how to get promoted, and also to warn people of known academic harassers or non-welcoming departments. It’s so refreshing because you can diversify your academic and social group and have really honest open discussions. Since we all work in different disciplines with different backgrounds, the competitive vibe just isn’t there.
What advice would you give to budding young scientists?
“Fail fast but carry on”. Everyone fails. Try stuff, see if you like it, then see how good you are at it. Sometimes success is due to luck, but with science you’ve got great odds if you work hard and stay patient.
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