Profile

I am a currently in the first year of my PhD at Edinburgh University and I am looking at the role of a hormone that we think can help to make people healthier when they eat less food. There is some evidence that when animal or humans eat about 30%  less than their normal food intake they can live longer and are more healthy and less likely to develop diseases such as diabetes. At the same time, a hormone in the blood also increases and we think that this hormone is making people healthier. In my PhD I will try and find out if this is correct.

My days can be very varied but most of the time I am either in the lab doing some experiments which can take anywhere between a few minutes and all day. Other days I will go through the data from my experiments and try to make sense of what I have found, making graphs to show what has happened and looking for interesting results. When I am less busy I will spend some time reading papers that other scientists around the world have written to stay up to date with the latest findings and discoveries.