Meet the scientists!

When I was seven, I managed to get hold of a screwdriver and take the washing machine apart. My mum went mental! I didn’t know how it worked, which pieces went where, and I couldn’t put it back together again. When I finally got it back together, I had a vague idea about how it worked. I’m still trying to figure out how things work by getting different pieces in the right place, but instead of assembling parts of a washing machine, I assemble the molecules that people are made of into the tiny machines which we all have inside us, and which keep us working normally.

For a long time now, scientists have known the molecules that life is made of, but they don’t know exactly how they interact with one another, and fit together to make stuff happen. Somehow, they form machines which allow us to digest food, move, grow, heal ourselves, sense the outside world and stop us getting diseases. I’ve written a computer program which can help us answer some of these questions. Basically, you can give it two molecules, and it will try and fit them together and see if they can form a stable piece of machinery, and show you what that machinery looks like.

It varies from day to day.  Usually I get the train to central London where I work, grab a coffee and check my emails.  Sometime I spend all day programming, other days I spend reading about other peoples research and thinking about new ideas and directions.  I always go to lunch with other scientists and talk about our research.  Recently I went to a conference in Milan, and was there when they won the Champions League, which was nice!

The most stressful days, when I’m really busy, are when I take part in a ‘competition’ called CAPRI that happens every few months.

Most people don’t really think about how life works, they just go about their day to day business without thinking about it. I want to expose children to material which will get them thinking, like this video, which shows some of our molecular machinery in action: The Inner Life of a Cell

When I see things like that video, it feels like I’m looking into an alien world that is very different from the world I see day to day. I believe that, just by looking at things like this, people will start asking questions about how the body achieves the things which they take for granted. Then they will want to know how the body is able to touch, see and hear, and how it protects us from disease, or repairs itself when injured.

There will be many problems in the future which we will need to overcome with scientific and technological solutions, like climate change, feeding the world, curing diseases and supplying energy.  I think that if people can get interested in science from a young age, the world would be better prepared to tackle these problems and build a better future.