Meet the Team: Matt
This is a guest post from team member Matt Dunn, PhD student in Regenerative Medicine.
I’ve always been interested in ageing as a disease, where most other diseases and conditions are just symptoms of ageing. This, combined with my own desire to extend human longevity, led me to a career in academia.
My teacher at upper school for biology and chemistry was just the most engaging and passionate person, and thanks to him I went on to do a degree in biochemistry at Warwick, and then a MSc in neuroscience at Keele, knowing that the brain was where ageing can be most keenly felt. Currently I’m just finishing up a PhD between Keele, Loughborough and Nottingham universities, where I am building a model of part of the brain, in order to help research and find treatments for Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases.
Throughout this academic progress, I’ve always had other passions, with teaching, outreach and science communication being relevant ones (PC gaming, baking and painting being the others!). I always felt that if you cannot communicate a PhD project to an 8-year-old, you need to work harder on how you can translate ideas.
The idea of the ‘elevator pitch’ is that you should be able to explain concepts to someone in an elevator within the time you’re both riding to a different floor. The same is true in academia with conferences and networking being vital parts of your career, and the ability to effectively communicate complex scientific concepts with ease is always useful. As such, I’ve always pursued every opportunity to take part in outreach and science communication, annually volunteering at science fairs such as the Big Bang Fair (Birmingham) and Imagineering Fair (Coventry), being a STEM ambassador, and learning to teach in Higher Education.
These ideas have become more solid as I have travelled through my PhD, with my desire to do research decreasing and my passion to teach and transfer ideas to others increasing. Now at the very end of my PhD, I am looking for a career as a teacher in Higher or Further Education, which gives my time doing outreach more emphasis than before. I will always enjoy taking part in outreach events, and I will always have a love of communicating my work and the work of others to anyone who will listen.
