• Question: What have you achieved so far with you work?

    Asked by Jesschan02 to Chris, Josh, Rebecca, Rob, Susan on 21 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Ebony, Naomi845.
    • Photo: Susan Cartwright

      Susan Cartwright answered on 21 Jun 2015:

      Nothing dramatic, to be honest: I have contributed to important results in particle physics, but not the sort that make headlines. Most people who work in experimental science contribute, to repeat a widely used metaphor, a number of small bricks to the ongoing building of knowledge, rather than laying out the plans for an entire new wing!

      I’d like to think that my most important achievement is the students I have trained. Some of them have gone on to become lecturers themselves; others are teachers; others work in scientific research or in industry. Some of them would certainly have succeeded regardless of who taught them, but I think there are some to whom I gave the right advice or encouragement at the right time.

    • Photo: Josh Meyers

      Josh Meyers answered on 22 Jun 2015:

      I believe I have made a small improvement on the best methods by which people compare proteins and decide which ones are similar and dissimilar. It is a tiny step forward in the grand scheme of things.

      Science doesn’t work in huge leaps and bounds. It works by many excited scientists gently nudging the frontiers of human knowledge.

    • Photo: Rebecca Dewey

      Rebecca Dewey answered on 22 Jun 2015:

      I have spent the last 3 years using a brain imaging technique called near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS, pronounced “nears”). NIRS is quite rare in the fact that it is completely safe and easy to use in people who have a cochlear implant (a device to help very deaf people to hear again). It’s also easy to use in children, which is important as in the future we’re interested in treating deafness in very young children.

      This brain imaging machine, NIRS, has not been used in adults very much before, so we’re testing it out to see if we can use it to look at the brains of deaf people. I ran an experiment in 30 deaf people and 30 hearing people. I wanted to see what the auditory cortex (the hearing part of the brain) does in deaf people because they can’t hear sounds. I found out that in some deaf people, the “hearing” part of the brain responds to pictures instead of to sounds! I did this with this new NIRS machine which we can now carry on using in people who have had some hearing restored using a cochlear implant – so now I can use it to watch how the brain adapts to having some sounds to deal with again (or for the first time, if the person has been deaf since birth).

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