Question: What is your motivation for doing this?

Sarah Thomas answered on 17 Mar 2011:

Umm… well I’m sorry to tell a sad story but someone I was really close to got cancer and she passed away. The chemo made her worse, it made her very weak and she couldn’t fight the cancer. I felt so helpless as she got weaker and weaker, and I knew that I wanted to do something useful. I was studying chemistry at uni at the time and I decided that I would go into cancer research after my degree.

I think it’s really easy to be motivated by something like cancer research because it means so much to lots of people and cancer has affected so many families. So I just concentrate on that. It feels good to be doing something to help, and to be doing something meaningful with my life.