I’ve just finished my Science degree so I’m now doing Honours; a year when you work in a Lab on your own research project and write up a big report at the end. My project is to find out as much as I can about my protein as nobody really knows what it does, but it seems to be important for our immune system in fighting infections. I am looking at where it is inside the cell, which is not easy as it is all far too small to see with our eyes! To be able to find the protein you want you have to tag it with a fluorescent marker so that when you look at the cells through a microscope, you can see the protein glowing inside them.

I also want to find out what this protein does, so I will try to block it from working and see if the cell can still do what it’s supposed to.

I don’t know exactly how to do all these things yet as I am pretty new to research, but that’s why you do Honours. You learn the things you need to know while getting plenty of help from your supervisor and from the other people in your Lab.

I usually get into the Lab at about 9.30am. I’ll have a cup of tea, check my emails and get started on an experiment. There is usually a lot of waiting time between the steps of each experiement; 15 mins, 45 mins, an hour or more. In that time I can work on another experiment in the Lab or go into the office and work on my computer, reading reserach papers, organising my results and planning what to do next. There’s a bit of time for catching up on the online news, a bit of Facebook news, and reading a couple of blogs too!

I stay at the Lab until about 5pm, depending on when I finish what I need to do. I get to plan my own time and choose when I do things, but I have a few meetings and classes with set times that I need to attend. Most of the people in my Lab (about 15 of us) have lunch together and sometimes we’ll have a drink after work or go out for dinner. We talk a bit about science and our work, but mostly about the weekend or what’s in the news.

After work I go for a run, cook dinner, watch TV and hang out with my boyfriend (who is also a Scientist, but I met him at the Pub, not in the Lab).

If I win, I want the money to go into something which will encourage you guys to take an interest (or more of an interest) in science. CSIROs The Helix is a science magazine for students with lots of science news, articles, experiments, and fun things for you to do. We haven’t worked out all the details yet, but I would like to set up a competition for you to write fairly short science articles or stories, with a winner, or a couple of winners, to receive prizes including a subscription to The Helix and to have their article published in the magazine.

I wish there were competitions like this available for me to enter as getting your work published (or even looked at) is quite hard if you haven’t already had things published. Hopefully this would give some of you a first step in your writing careers or an interest in a particular area of science, and who doesn’t like to win things?!