• Question: What types of science do you do at work? Do you do more writing or experiments/practical work?

    Asked by Tills2!!! to Kylie, Matt, Bex, RobB, Sam on 14 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Rebecca Thompson

      Rebecca Thompson answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      So my job is about 50/50 being in ‘the lab’ (preparing samples or looking at them in the microscope) vs being in the office (writing papers, processing data). This is nice as it means I’m not doing the same thing every day!

      But this varies a lot depending on what project/job you are doing!

    • Photo: Matt Dunn

      Matt Dunn answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      A good question! For me it is different at different times. When I start a new experiment with my the brain cells, for a few days it is all practical work, and then while they grow I only have to replace the cell food (called media) which is a 20 minute job, so I usually spend the rest of the time writing and planning the next experiments.

      Once the cells are grown then its all practical work again for a few days while I take the pictures of the cells.

      It’s a cycle of practical-writing work, and it’s different depending on what kind of work you are doing, and what techniques you use 🙂

    • Photo: Kylie Belchamber

      Kylie Belchamber answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      My job is different again! I have patients that come to give blood every day, and we share the blood between about 10 of us. This means 1-2x a week i have to process a blood sample, which takes about 3 hours. I then have to grow the cells for 12 days until I can experiment on them. Then I would do a 2 day experiment on them. Because this is such a long amount of time, I have to keep having cells at different stages, so I always have something to do.
      I tend to spent about 3 whole days in the lab, and 2 doing writing, or planning new experiments, or having meetings, or teaching undergrads.
      This can vary though, and some weeks I will have no lab work to do, while others I will be in the lab everyday!

    • Photo: Rob Brass

      Rob Brass answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      Mine is probably 50/50 too. It depends on what my timetable looks like that week, if im down for clinical duties then itll be very practical but if i have free time then i’ll be doing project work, which could be practical, number crunching or writing up!

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