Profile

I live in South East London with my husband and teenage step daughter, however, I am originally from Essex. I 3 brothers and 2 sisters – which makes things like birthdays and Christmas really loud and busy!

I love to run, which I have done since I was a teenager. I’m not a fast runner at all, but I can keep going. Which has meant that I have run quite a few half and full marathons, that I did to raise money for cancer charities and hospices. My favourite race I’ve run was the London Marathon, as there are so many people cheering you on the whole way round the 26.2 miles – about the distance from Leeds to York.

I love to bake and decorate cakes after being taught how to decorate wedding cakes when I was younger. I have made weddings cakes for both of my sisters, and several of my friends. The best cake I think I have made, however, is a 3D minion cake that I made for my step daughter when she was little. I’m no where near as good as people who go on Great British Bake Off though!

Being a scientist is actually the second job I have had since leaving school. I left school after my A-levels, and worked for a company that looked after people’s savings for when they retire. However, I love to read and learn new things so started to study for a degree in Psychology in the evenings after I’d finished work. I fell in love with Psychology, and when I finished my degree I decided to see if I could be a researcher in Psychology. So now I split my time between researching about brain injuries and teaching Psychology to university students.

I work with people who have had a brain injury. Brain injury can be caused by many things such as infection or lack of oxygen, however, I mostly look at brain injury that results from trauma. What we mean by traumatic brain injury is where it is the result of something either hitting or entering the brain. This can come from a fall, for example.

Traumatic brain injuries – or what we shorten to TBI – can cause damage to the brain which we may be able to see on CT or MRI scans. This damage to the brain and the brain cells can mean that some of our everyday brain functions are damaged. Depending on where and how the damage has taken place, this could effect someones ability to remember things, to communicate or to be able to solve problems.

To work out which brain functions have been damaged, to understand how they have been damaged, and how badly, doctors or other specially trained healthcare professions will carry out an assessment called a Neuropsychological Assessment. The person who has had an injury will be asked to complete lots of small tasks such as remembering a sequence of numbers, or solving a puzzle which tells us about what is and what isn’t working.

As a scientist, I work with people who have had a TBI and also people who haven’t to understand how someone who has had a TBI performs differently on these tasks. I also work on designing new tasks or improving those we already have so that we can get the best understanding about what is and what isn’t working. Understanding what is working is as important as what is not working, so that we can decide how to build a treatment and support plan for that person.

It is difficult to describe what a typical day is for me, as when and where I work will depend on what the task is for that day. However, one things is for sure and that is I have to have a cup of tea before I can start anything!

When someone takes part in a research project, we typically call those people participants. The participants in my work may have a brain injury, or they may not, depending on what I am currently trying to understand. Before the pandemic, I would meet with my participants in person. This might be in the university, in a hospital or at their home. Since the pandemic, I have been meeting with people via Zoom. I might meet them during the day, in the evening or at a weekend, depending on when we could arrange a time. When I see a participant, I will ask them to complete some of the tasks we might use in a Neuropsychological Assessment at a hospital. Depending on how many we are using, this can take between 1 -2 hours per participant.

If I am not seeing participants, I will most likely start work around 10am, and finish around 6pm. To understand which tasks people with TBI perform differently in and how they perform differently, I need to take all of the scores from all of my participants, and look at whether there are differences in the average score from the participants with TBI to the average score from the participants without a TBI. When I have the results from a research project, I have to write up those results so that they can be read by other researchers, doctors and other healthcare professionals. Some days I may also go and speak with them about the findings. Communicating the results from our research is important so that they can be used by the professionals in the healthcare services when they are seeing patients.

As well as carrying out research, I also teach Psychology to university students. So some days I will be in the university in either a lecture theatre or classroom.

As it is really important for brain and mental health to have time out from working, most days I will finish work and will do something I enjoy. This might be going for a run, doing a yoga class, doing some baking or reading a book. I would also be lying if I said I didn’t love to chill out on the couch watching programmes like Love Island!