Question: what is your job? and what does it involve

Mark Travis answered on 13 Jun 2010:

Hello,
My job title is ‘research fellow’ – this is a fancy name for someone who does scientific research. I am the head of a research lab, and we do lots of experiments to try and find out how the immune system works- what makes it become active to fight off harmful infections, and what stops the immune system from attacking our own bodies when we are healthy. If the immune system does attack our own body, we are in big trouble, as this causes so-called ‘autoimmune disease’. Examples are Type I diabetes (when the immune system attacks certain cells in the pancreas), multiple scleorsis (when the immune system attacks parts of our neurons) and inflammatory bowel diseases like Chron’s disease (when the immune system attacks our gut). So, by understanding what molecules and cells are regulating the immune system, we can hopefully get a handle on what does wrong in these diseases.
My lab is composed of me, a pot-doc called John (who has done PhD training in science research, so is experienced), Asia a PhD student (who is doing her training in my lab), Beata who is a technician (who makes the lab tick over properly and does lots of experiments as well) and Ourania who is a Masters student (a short training degree that some people take after finishing University, before doing a PhD). All these guys are doing the experiments and helping me to design and interpret the findings. My job is to help everyone design the experiments, and come up with the new research directions and experiments we should do in order to find out new things.