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I run two electron microscopes and several confocal microscopes. I either look at samples for people and send them the results or teach them how to use the microscopes themselves, it all depends on how much work they need to do.

The electron microscopes are  house sized pieces of kit that use electrons to look at very small objects, mine will go up to a million times magnification. We usually use them to look at individual protein molecules or whole viruses or very thin slices of cells trying to understand how a drug works or a what a disease does on a molecular level. Once it a while I get something odd – I’ve looked at the fats droplets in icecream for a company that wanted to make them smaller and more uniform to get a creamier taste with less fat.

The confocals are very different things – they’re still huge microscopes but don’t have the magnification of an electron microscope – just  1000x. They shine a laser onto a sample and look for a fluoresent signal coming back, we label cells with dyes attached to different proteins in the cell and use the fluoresence like a highlighter pen to make specific details stand out. It’s the ability to cut out all the information we’re not interested in that makes them so powerful. We might use them to study the function of a particular gene within a cell or to look at how a virus responds to a particular drug.

My days are rarely typical as I help other people do their research. I’m normally in for eight to make sure everything’s working before other people come in. If I have to teach someone I like to do that in the morning so they can spend the afternoon practising whilst I’m still around to help. Unless I’m on a microscope all day I spend a couple of hours before lunches going through emails, answering enquiries and helping academics design their next experiment. Usually by the afternoon I’ll be preparing specimens for the next few days.

Sometimes I’ll be on a microscope by myself looking at samples for somebody that can’t make it or doesn’t need to learn,  I’ll put in some earphones and listen to music or a radio play whilst I work. If things are going well I tend to work straight through breaks uninterrupted as it’s the best way to get good data and genuinely enjoy working with microscopes.

Working in very dark rooms all the time takes a bit of getting used to – the winter’s not nice as I’ll get to work whilst it’s dark and leave after sunset so might not see daylight for a few days but it’s worth it for the times I’ve been the first person to see something new to science.