Profile

I’ve worked with mass spectrometers for about 15 years.  Mass spectrometers are like scales for weighing molecules… molecules are what cells are made of. If you weighed everybody in your class really accurately, you’d be able to tell who was whom just from their weight!  And it’s exactly the same with molecules.

So using the mass spectrometer, I can tell other scientists what molecules are in their experiments, and I can tell them how much there is of each too.  Then the other scientists can grow cells in a dish and compare cancer cells and normal cells, or cancer cells with and without drugs.  This helps us figure out how cancer works, and how the drugs work.

I do some work in the lab, and some at the computer.  I also do a lot of talking with people about how to design the right experiment to answer the question they have, and explaining what the results mean.  And I have to keep the mass spectrometers in shape so they give the best results.

When I arrive at work I check my email. There is usually something from another scientist about wanting to run an experiment on the mass spectrometer (mass-spec for short). I need to give them all the info to prepare for the experiment.

Then I check that the mass-specs are working well.

Next I need to get today’s experiments ready, which normally involves a lot of pipetting liquids around. (See “what I’d do with the money” below)  Then I can load the experiments onto the mass-spec and program it to do the right thing.

After lunch, I process the data from yesterday’s experiment… Turning measurements (numbers) into answers (words) and send the results to the scientist whose experiment it was.

Finally, if I have time, I write some computer programs (or web apps) to help organising experiments, processing data, or communicating results.

Usually, somebody wants to do a weird experiment that seems impossible, or sometimes a mass spectrometer breaks down, and it’s my job to make sure everything works.

At the end of the day I go home on my red scooter to my family, who always save me some dinner.  If there’s time, we play a bit.  Then I bath my kids and we put them to bed.

Then, I often get my laptop out and keep working on data or writing computer programs. Also, I can log in to the mass-spec over the internet, and check that it’s working well.