Profile
Alison Thomson
Last Day of Questions and Voting!!! Keep 'em coming guys!!!
My CV
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Education:
George Heriot’s School (’95 – ’06), Heriot Watt University (’08 – ’12), Edinburgh University (’12 – ’13), and Aberdeen University (’13 – present)
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Qualifications:
Honours Degree in Sport and Exercise Science, Masters Degree in Human Anatomy, and I’m half way to a PhD in Developmental Biology.
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Work History:
I worked in a bowling alley for a while as an ‘Alley Cat’,and for the fraud department of a bank.
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Current Job:
I’m a PhD student at Aberdeen Uni.
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I work on a disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), which is a disease that makes the nerves in people’s bodies get sick and die. Unfortunately, the worst version of it is also the most common, and it affects young children, and a lot of them die before they can celebrate their 2nd birthday.
Some really smart scientists have found out that it’s not just your nerves that get sick when you have SMA, but also lots of other parts of the body, like your heart, spleen and blood vessels. That’s where I come in – I’m trying to work out what is wrong with the blood vessels and how we can fix them. I also look at the spleen, because that’s one of the organs in the body that helps you get better when you have a cold, so we need to find out how to fix the problems there.
I look at blood vessels by dissecting part of the eye and colouring in the blood vessels so that I can see them better – that’s when I get to use the fluorescent microscope – it’s super cool!
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My Typical Day:
Start an experiment in the morning, then spend my afternoon on the microscope looking at my good work!
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I do immunohistochemistry – which is just a fancy word for saying I get some tissue (like a piece of the eye) and use something like food colouring to stain different cells so that I can see them better.
Here’s a really pretty picture of blood vessels in the eye
There’s a lot of waiting around in between each step of the experiment, so I take the chance to go and have a cup of coffee and read some new science papers. I sometimes go over to the anatomy department and help the students to learn their anatomy, which is pretty good fun!
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I’d make a kids Science Magazine full of your science questions and hand it out for free!
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Small. Crazy. Enthusiastic.
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Only for being a little too loud/enthusiastic/hyper!
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Honestly? I LOVE Little Mix! And I love all the golden oldies – Genesis are awesome!
What's your favourite food?
Home made pasta carbonara – yum!
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
I want to be taller (I’m only 5′ 2″ and I hate having to ask for people to pass me things from the top shelf at the shops!), I’d like to make a huge breakthrough in science (the kind that leads to a Nobel Prize!), and I’d like to win the lottery (duh!)
Tell us a joke.
I asked the guy sitting next to me if he had any Sodium Hypobromite… He said NaBrO
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