What is your current role and what does a typical week look like?

I am an Associate Professor in the neuroscience group.

Our weeks vary quite considerably. I am both research and teaching active. So I may be in the lab, analysing data, writing manuscripts, reviewing grants, reviewing papers, writing lectures, giving lectures or tutorials, or performing administrative duties.

Nationality: I am British, my wife is French, and my daughter is French/British. So it's a multicultural household.

Which part of your role do you enjoy the most, and what are the biggest challenges?
My favourite by far is performing experiments, though this becomes more infrequent as your career moves forward. I still get called in to troubleshoot, I love being in the lab, and having to think on your feet to fix issues as they arise. The most difficult thing for me would be time management now that I have a young family. Before I would be able to work evenings and weekends to hit all of my deadlines, but that isn't really an option now.

Who would you say is your role model in your personal and/or professional life?
Professionally, I have been interested by so many great scientists throughout my life. At school and watching documentaries, I learnt about all these people that shaped our world; Einstein, Copernicus, Mendeleev, Newton, Darwin, Curie, Di Vinci, Archimedes, Cajal, Harvey (I was born in the William Harvey hospital in Ashford), Pasteur, Rutherford, Thompson...... all of whom made me want to follow this career path. However, I would say the greatest influence of my scientific career is my PhD supervisor, Prof. Nick Dale, he is an exceptional researcher and has really shaped my approach to science. Honourable mentions have to go to my Post-Doctoral supervisors, Profs Jack Feldman and Alex Gourine, who also played their parts in making me the scientist I am today.

Personally, my role model would be my wife. I met her at UCLA. She moved to the US, knowing almost no English. I don't know many people that would be willing to move nearly 6,000 miles away into a completely different culture, having to learn the language as they go. She then moved to the UK, assimilating another new culture. She changed career recently, leaving science to work for a medical device company. In a few short years she became a highly respected world leading expert in her new field. Having children has not hindered her career, and having a career has not hindered her being a parent. She is such an amazing mother and our daughter dotes on her. Few people are able to balance a career and family with the success that she does. She is filled with hope and always looks for the good in people. She is the best person I know.

Which skills help you most in being able to perform your role?
In the lab, problem solving is probably the most important thing. Sometimes you have all the time in the world to think your way around a complication, but other times mere seconds or minutes. For teaching, patience, you have to get very complicated concepts across to a diverse group who learn in different ways, so you may have to find several ways to explain the same idea using different mediums. Overall, time management, there are so many facets of the job and balancing them all can be challenging.

How has your education or roles previous to joining Life Sciences, informed your interests, and why did you choose this career direction?
My interest in science began when my mother began studying for a job within the ambulance service, when I was about 11. I read my undergraduate degree in biomedical sciences at Durham, where my interests in neural control of cardiorespiratory control developed. I then earnt my PhD at Warwick, where I researched control of breathing by astrocytes in the brainstem. I then spent my post-doctoral career expanding my knowledge of the brainstem nuclei involved in cardiorespiratory control. I was fortunate enough to work in some very prestigious labs at Yale, UCLA, and UCL. Science is one of the few careers where you get to live and travel abroad. I came back to Warwick on an MRC discovery award to work on an exciting project with some state-of-the-art imaging equipment, inscopix GRIN lens technology. The School of Life Sciences also planned to construct a new interdisciplinary biomedical research building, which would have a floor of custom built labs for the Neurogroup. I now work in these labs, and have many diverse collaborations. In the past year, I have published in mathematics and chemistry as well as biology. Which brings us to the current day.

What are your main interests or passions, outside of work?
Playing with my dog and child (soon to be children) takes up most of my time, and it is time I would not give up for the world. We go for nature walks twice a day, and I not sure who gets muddier my dog or my daughter, or me through secondhand dirt from both of them. We have family English Heritage, National Trust, and Art passes, so we are always taking my daughter (and dog when we can) to galleries, museums, stately homes, castles, etc. Before that I spent much of my time reading, my favourite books are: Pere Goriot, to kill a mockingbird, the three musketeers, lord of the flies, moby dick, the broken empire saga, a song of ice and fire saga, and the first law saga, the art of war (translated by Thomas Cleary and published by Shambhala). I have also trained in a lot of different styles of martial arts, that is probably the thing I miss doing the most.

Interview date August 2021

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