• Question: What do you find is the most exciting thing about your work?

    Asked by mirandabaines to Laura, Nicola, Norman, Sandra, Thanasis on 11 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by jelly10, ashclass, welshone.
    • Photo: Nicola Wardrop

      Nicola Wardrop answered on 11 Mar 2013:


      The most exciting thing is when you get some results which are really cool – something which hasn’t been shown before, or some really nice graph which clearly shows something going on. I did some work looking at a disease spreading into an area of Uganda where it had never been seen before, and found a really clear pattern – it was spreading into areas which had better habitat for the flies which transmit the disease. The graphs showed it really well, so that was pretty exciting as no one has ever really looked at that before.

    • Photo: Laura Soul

      Laura Soul answered on 11 Mar 2013:


      It’s definitely the most exciting when I find out something new that no one has found out before, science can be hard work as collecting data and doing experiments can take a very long time (months or years even!) and so when you get a new result after all that time and hard work it’s very exciting. That and when I get to go on cool adventures to places like Nepal and Bolivia.

    • Photo: Sandra Phinbow

      Sandra Phinbow answered on 12 Mar 2013:


      I find it really exciting when I hear “Oh wow come look at this!”.

      It usually means something interesting and rare has been brought to the lab. We had a whole leg come in once and I was amazed at how the thigh bones seemed so thin with all the flesh it had around it, I wondered how it could possibly not snap under all the weight!

      Years ago we had a sample come in that was a huge piece of skin and deep flesh. The patient was very sick with a disease called Necrotising Fasciitis – this is also called the flesh eating disease. It’s very uncommon but can be deadly very quickly if it is not recognised, diagnosed and treated asap!

      Eyeballs are a rarity, only see 1 in the last 10 years. They look at you funny…it’s like the dissecting bench is staring at you! It’s really wierd, but brilliant.

      And I have seen intestines, and I just can’t help but wonder how it all fits in, especially when the person they belong to is quite petite. They really are very long.

      It’s just exciting seeing rare things.

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