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I am in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford. I work in an area of science called X-ray crystallography. Never heard of it? Let me explain…….

When things get really small, like the cells that make up our body, we use a microscope to see them. But some of the things that we want to see (like proteins) are just too small to see under a normal microscope. Instead we have to shoot crystals that are made of these really small things with X-rays instead of normal light. Doing this creates certain patterns that we call diffraction patterns. We can analyse these patterns (with MATHS) to work out what the small object looked like. But there’s a catch! The X-rays damage the small objects as you shoot them. This destroys the patterns and you may not be able to get enough patterns to analyse and work out what the small object looks like. My project involves using maths and computer code (and even experiments in the lab) to correct the damage that the X-rays do to the objects. In biochemistry, the objects we look at are proteins but you can look at the really small atomic structures of anything: salt, diamonds, aircraft wings, …… the list is endless.

I usually spend my day with old school pen and paper (the best way) and Google (because I don’t know what I’d do without it) and sit at my desk thinking and writing maths. I love writing maths to model things and in my current research project I’m modelling how X-rays damage crystals made up of proteins molecules. More specifically I really care about how they damage the beautiful X-ray diffraction patterns that we need (see the “More about me and my work” section to find out why we care about this damage).

I do find that most of my best ideas come when I’m not actually at work so I go for walks in the park (1 minute walk from my work) if the sun is out. This clears my head and I get a chance to really think. When I’m ready, I get back to the computer and translate the maths that I write down into computer code so I can draw plots and simulate what’s going on.

Sometimes there’s no way I can know if the maths is right unless I do the experiments. On these days I go into the lab and mix chemicals with protein molecules to grow crystals. Then we take them to a really big place that generates X-rays called Diamond Light Source synchrotron. I then shoots the crystals with X-rays and get all the data I need to get back to the lab and write code to test the results.

Some days I have meetings about my plans, I go to seminars where I listen to other researchers talk about their projects. I also have a journal club where my supervisor and the rest of my research group meet up and talk about a recent scientific paper that has been published.

I love my job 🙂