Profile

I moved to Glasgow almost seven years ago and I have loved every moment. I love eating out and watching movies. I am a teacher at the Glasgow University Pole Dancing Club and have competed in nationals.

I am studying a virus called yellow fever virus. Those who have travelled to the Americas or Africa might have heard of it. The virus lives in mosquitoes and humans can get it when bitten by mosquitoes.

I am working on creating a vaccine against the virus so we dont have to worry about getting bitten by mosquitoes. But also, I am creating a medicine for those who are already feeling sick with the virus.

I work at the Centre for Virus Research in Glasgow. It is an amazing place full of scientists working on a huge variety of bugs!

I tend to use the morning to plan my experiments. It can take up to 2 hours to plan it out!

I usually head to the lab around 10-11 am and start working. I nourish and work with cells which come from different organs of a variety of animals.

I treat the cells with different drugs and then I try to infect them with yellow fever virus. After some days, I test how sick they got. If the cells are sick, we can conclude the drug doesn’t work…but if they don’t get sick, we can investigate the drug further.

Everyday is different but generally I work the hardest around midday. I use the afternoon to write everything I did during the day to keep a diary of what I am doing the lab.

The idea is that I use the prize money to cover the expenses involved in opening a YouTube channel. Although I would probably be filming with my mobile phone, I would need some money for video editing software and stationary.

My idea is to do a series of videos about bugs in the news. I want to do a mixture of animations and hand drawings to explain to everyone in simple terms what’s going on.