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Natalie Garrett

I am thrilled to have won, thank you so much everyone who voted for me! You can still ask questions for the next week I think, so please do ask away!

My CV

  • Education

    2006-2010: PhD in Physics at University of Exeter. 2002-2006: MPhys degree in Physics with Medical Physics at University of Exeter. A-Levels and GCSEs: Cranbrook School, Cranbrook, Kent

  • Qualifications

    PhD, MPhys, A-Levels (Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics AS)

  • Work History

    2010-today: University of Exeter. Before that, I did summer jobs as a medical secretary in Exeter during my undergraduate degree. Before THAT I had a few temp jobs, including: barmaid, office administrative assistant, admissions co-ordinator for a language school. The weirdest job I had was one week of making squishy mouse mats to promote a train ticket website.

  • Current Job

    Research Scientist

  • Employer

    University of Exeter

  • My Work:

    I use lasers to look at the paths drugs take inside the body.

  • My Typical Day:

    A pleasant country walk to the lab, check my emails, run some experiments, analyse some data, have a few meetings, teaching and training other lab users, drink lots of tea!

  • What I'd do with the prize money:

    I want to expand my bag of tricks for outreach talks to include more exciting experiments to bring to schools. I want to make 3D printed smartphone adapters that make the smartphone camera into a microscope, to give to schoolkids (scroll down to the bottom of this page for more info on that and pics!)

  • My Interview

    • How would you describe yourself in 3 words?

      Innovative, Quirky, Practical

      Were you ever in trouble at school?

      Not really – I was suspended once but I never had a detention in my life. I was usually very good at pushing things to the limit of what I could get away with.

      Who is your favourite singer or band?

      Pain of Salvation (they’re like me, they take an experimental approach to their work, each album seems to be in a different style to the next)

      What's your favourite food?

      A roast dinner. My friends tell me it doesn’t count if there’s no meat (I’m vegetarian) but roast potatoes and gravy have universal appeal!

      What is the most fun thing you've done?

      I love cryogens! Whenever we get a delivery with dry ice (some things we buy need to be kept very cold while they’re in the post, and dry ice is solid CO2 which is about -80 Celcius), it’s always a lot of fun to play (ahem, I mean seriously experiment) with it, like adding it to soapy water to make a huge mess of smoky-looking bubbles. I’ve taken a lot of cool photographs of things with dry ice involved.

      If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!

      Assuming I can’t be sneaky and wish for more wishes, I’d wish for: 1) A billionaire benefactor to pay for my own laboratory; 2) An end to world suffering (but you have to be careful how you word these wishes, I’ve seen the films where someone wished this and then suddenly everyone’s dead…), 3) The ability to teleport myself and other people/objects. Seriously, I am so done with having to spend time and money travelling!

      Tell us a joke.

      I asked the librarian if she had the book about Pavlov’s dog Schrödinger’s cat. She said it rang a bell, but she didn’t know if it was there or not.

  • My profile link:
    https://ias.im/u.98939

Questions answered by Natalie

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