Profile

Hello readers!

I knew I wanted to be a scientist since the tender age of 3 when I would conduct ‘experiments’ on my sister- most of them wouldn’t go as planned. No worries, my sister is still alive!

Before starting my PhD journey, I did my undergrad in human genetics at Trinity College, and so I hope my gene-studying past will help me presently in answering your questions in the ‘gene zone’.  When I’m not in the lab, I can be found eating and chilling with friends, or binge watching TV shows or, if I’m not feeling my usual lazy self, hiking!

Sciencing- I am freezing cells here in liquid nitrogen so I can use them again anytime I want!

Eating- Pizza is delicious for the soul

More eating- cupcakes are important during analyzing experiments

Adventure time- This is when my friends and I went to Wicklow to explore the woods!

Did you know our body is like many many teeny tiny computers working together? We call them ‘cells’. Now there are many different types of cells and they all do different jobs to make sure we can function as living beings. Some cells are responsible for digesting all the good food we eat, some are involved in making sure we breathe, and the list goes on and on.

Now we are constantly exposed to danger from the outside world from bacteria and viruses and what not, but a certain class of special cells called ‘immune cells’ are in each and everyone of us to protect us from those bad guys. I study one type of those immune cells: the macrophages! Macrophages are the ‘guardian’ cells of our immune system and quickly respond to an infection caused by dangerous agents, like harmful bacteria, by eating them up and also sending help or ‘danger’ signals to other types of immune cells so they can all come and finish off the invaders! Its like a proper warzone in each of us!

However, sometimes things can go wrong! In some diseases called ‘inflammatory’ diseases, our own guardian cells can go a bit nuts and  start attacking our body’s other cells instead thinking those other cells in our body are the enemy!  Why?? We still don’t know for sure!

That’s where I come in! I do lab experiments on these powerful cells to find what makes a macrophage go in ‘attack mode’ or ‘peace mode’. If we can understand that, we can better treat inflammatory diseases in the future by switching those angry macrophages that destroy other cells to ‘good’ tissue-resolving macrophages that lead to repair of cells.

The main thing I do work wise is operating cool lab equipment to analyze my cells, and snack a lot in between. (Snacks are very important kids).

To be completely honest, there’s no such thing as a ‘typical’ day during a PhD. Each day varies according to how your experiments go, and so does your mood!

Good day/Happy me = My cells look healthy! And are behaving exactly as I expect them to when I treat them with different chemicals to understand how they work

Bad day/Annoyed me= Cells look unhappy, something goes wrong during the experiment and I cant figure out where the problem is. Not the coolest feeling, but I try to take it as a challenge or a mystery!

Its not just me doing all lab experiments though! I also had the chance to teach undergraduate students how to do those experiments. Science is all about learning and teaching after all!

In that spirit,  I also get to go to conferences to present the work our lab does and learn from other labs what they do. Here is a pic of my lab partner and I presenting a poster showing our work on macrophages, neurons and the brain at a conference at the Trinity Biomedical Sciences institute:

And that is just one of such events! Only last year I went to a conference in Belfast, three in Dublin, and one in Switzerland, where I met people from different countries doing amazing research on the immune system. Being in science, you surely get to travel around a lot but its better because you get to enjoy the new places AND learn new things all the time which allow you to develop more ideas for your own project.