• Question: What does your research go towards?

    Asked by to Ramya, Peter, Keith, Hannah, Bethany on 22 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ramya Bhatia

      Ramya Bhatia answered on 22 Jun 2014:

      My research is looking at HPV and cervical cancer. Most scientists are involved in a lot of different project. As such i am involved in a few different projects but there are threee keys aims of it

      1. Prevent- Vaccines are being given to girls in Scotland.
      I work with a team of people looking into how well the vaccine works, and what the effects of it is and whether we can eradicate HPV completely.

      2. Detect- For those people who havent been fortunate to have the vaccine, how to detect HPV infection and cervical cancer risk in people.
      I work to develop newer methods of HPV detection and identifying tests that can detect cancer very early on and more easily.

      3. Treat- For those people who have HPV infections and have unfortunately developed cancers, a part of my work deals with finding better ways to treat them by discovering new medicines.

    • Photo: Bethany Dearlove

      Bethany Dearlove answered on 22 Jun 2014:

      Simply, the aim of research is to further our knowledge, using measurable experiments to test our theories.

      Like Ramya, I’m involved in quite a few projects, with the general theme of using genetics to track the spread of disease alongside (or maybe even instead of) the more traditional methods of counting cases and asking people who they’ve been in contact with. An important part of my work is making sure that the methods I develop are usable by others (say, on a ward in a hospital), and talking to the public (people like you!) about what we’re trying to do, and how it might help how you’re treated in the future.

      Over the next few years I’m working towards the reality of taking a sample from a patient, and having genomic results available about how best to treat them, and whether the disease is related to any others in the hospital a few hours later – a stark contrast to current practice that requires pathogen culture, which can take several days. However, for this to be possible, methods are required that can both handle the sheer amount of data that routine sequencing will create, and provide results that are readily accessible. That’s where my work comes in!

    • Photo: Hannah Tanner

      Hannah Tanner answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Because I work in a hospital lab a lot of the work I do is to develop things to help the lab provide a better service to our users (the doctors who order the tests). That means to work I do is often more development than research. Research is about pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Development is more about taking existing technologies and new knowledge produced by research and turning that into working tools.

      In summary – I’m trying to help doctors get faster, more accurate results about their patients at a price that the NHS is prepared to pay.

    • Photo: Peter Elliott

      Peter Elliott answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      The majority of my current work is focussed on the delivery of results both to the people who employ me and to external partners who seek to use our expertise to get results to explain what their research means. I have found that moving to industry from academia the research has a much greater focus on information that can be used in a commercial sense rather than doing research to improve our knowledge and understanding of the world around us. This has its ups and downs. I enjoy the fast pace and dynamics of an industry lead approach, but if you think something would be interesting to investigate but it has no commercial value then the company will not want you wasting their time on something that does not give them a financial return.

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