• Question: why did you chose this area of work?

    Asked by lizzy to Sarah, Alan, Caspar, Diana, Murray on 21 Mar 2011 in Categories: . This question was also asked by 09walshcou, robbiec36.
    • Photo: Sarah Thomas

      Sarah Thomas answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      I chose Cancer Resarch because while I was doing my Chemistry degree at uni, my granny because very ill with cancer and she passed away really suddenly. The chemo made her very weak and I felt so helpless. So i decided that i would do something useful with my degree and go into Cancer Research. My gran is a great inspiration for me, and it feels good to know that in some small way, I am helping and that one day in the future my research might even save lives.

    • Photo: Alan Winfield

      Alan Winfield answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      Hi Lizzy. In fact I already answered 2 very similar questions so I hope you don’t mind me pointing you to my previous answers.

      The 1st about how I became a scientist is here: http://ias.im/35.240

      And the 2nd about how I got into robotics is here: http://ias.im/35.300

      I hope you find these answers helpful!

    • Photo: Caspar Addyman

      Caspar Addyman answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      It started out as an accident (lots of things do). During my psychology degree the course on developmental psychology (the psychology of growing up) was by far my favourite. The ultimate aim of psychology is to explain how your mind works when you are grown up. Then I got lucky. My university not only had a great babylab but they also accepted me to do a PhD.

      The aim of a phd is to train you to do research of your own. It is a big transition to go from just learning about a subject from books to trying to do your own original research and invent new experiments. But fortunately you have a professor to supervise you and help you start out.

      I’m very pleased I work with babies.. before I started I didn’t realise just how many different things they have to learn about in the first few years. And everything they do learn is completely essential for all the things you learn later. Humans make growning up look easy but things like language, abstract thinking and using tools are so difficult that no other species can do them.

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