• Question: Why Did You Choose To Do The Reasearch You Are Currently Doing? And Will It Help People?

    Asked by peach to Alastair, Emma, Hywel, Keith, Vicki on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Alastair Sloan

      Alastair Sloan answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Hi Peach

      I chose to do the research I am currently doing because it has a clinical need – ie it is led by patients and clinicians wanting better or smarter treatments. if we can speed up bone repair and control bone repair, we can speed up fracture healing and generate bone in areas where bone has been lost because of trauma or surgery. We can replace bone with bone rather than a metal plate.

    • Photo: Vicki Stevenson

      Vicki Stevenson answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Hi Peach
      I really want the work I do to help others, so that’s one of the reasons I’m looking for alternatives to using fossil fuels in buildings. Some people really struggle to pay for heating their houses and even risk hypothermia to save money, so I hope that the work I do will help them. Also if we find alternatives to fossil fuels it should reduce the impacts of global warming in the long run.

    • Photo: Keith Brain

      Keith Brain answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I initially started in my area of research because it allowed me to include a mixture of both Physics (using lasers and microscopes) with medical research. I enjoyed where I started, we’ve had some interesting results, and so I’m still working in a similar field.

      I study how autonomic nerves work. These nerves subconsciously control all our internal organs, and they go wrong in lots of disease (like diabetes and Parkinson’s disease) and with ageing. We try to study how these nerves work, and how medicines change how they work. There are lots of clinical application, like trying to boost nerve function as it fails during diabetes, that I hope will help people.

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