Profile
Alicia Galdon
My CV
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Education:
1998-2005: Highfield Primary School, Bolton
2005-2010: Harper Green Secondary School, Bolton
2010-2012: Bury College, Bury
2012-2016: The University of Manchester, BSc
2017-Present: The University of Manchester, PhD -
Qualifications:
12 GCSEs (6A*s, 4As, 2Bs), 4 A-Levels in Biology, Chemistry, Geography, Spanish (All A*), BSc (Hons) Biomedical Sciences (1st Class), PhD Immunology (ongoing).
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Work History:
My first job was as a Student Ambassador at the University of Manchester – I took people on tours around the university and helped out with interview days for new students. As part of my undergraduate degree, I spent a year working as a research scientist at AstraZeneca, which is a really big pharmaceutical company. I was part of a team helping to make sure new cancer treatments were safe and wouldn’t harm the body. It was working here that confirmed that I really did want to be a scientist! I’ve also recently worked as bar staff in the hospitality suites of Old Trafford (the home of Manchester United Football Club) on match days – I did this alongside my research work.
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Current Job:
I am currently a PhD researcher (which is a research scientist working towards a PhD qualification). I am also a Graduate Teaching Assistant – which means I help alongside lecturers to teach science practicals to undergraduate students.
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About Me:
I am an immunologist at the University of Manchester investigating the use of the immune system to treat cancer! I also love to travel and meet people from all over the world.
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Read more
Im an immunologist currently doing a PhD at the University of Manchester. Although I spend a lot of my time doing science, I also love to play netball (and I currently play for two teams). I love to meet up with friends, go shopping, go to music festivals, and I’m really interested in makeup and fashion.
I’m possibly the words biggest Harry Potter fan (I read the first book when I was 7 years old and have now read them all around 20 times!).
My favourite thing to do is travel – I want to visit as many countries as I possibly can! I especially love to visit places with beautiful beaches and clear sea, or with mountains and rainforests, because you get the chance to see some really amazing wildlife! I also love to go to places with a completely different culture to my own, it can be so interesting to learn about a different way of life.
I love that as a scientist I get to go to conferences all around the world, its a nice way to get a sneaky holiday as well as learning about cool new discoveries! My boyfriend is also a scientist and is currently working in Singapore, so I get to visit him a lot over there too – I love that part of the world.
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Read more
Cancer cells can appear in your body at random – but our immune system is usually on the case, and can find and destroy the cancer long before it has chance to make us sick. The problem is, cancer cells are clever – they learn and ‘adapt’, finding ways to hide from our immune system. When this happens, the disease sets in and people start to get sick.
Scientists discovered that if we can find ways that can either make the cancer not as good at hiding, or make the immune system better at ‘seeking’ – we can use this as a treatment for cancer. These treatments are known as ‘immunotherapy’.
One of the ways we can do this is to increase the number of immune cells that are available to patrol the body. Just like in a game of hide and seek, the more people you have doing the ‘seeking’ – the more likely you will find the person hiding! Our immune cells naturally multiply when we get an infected with things like disease causing bacteria, to fight off the disease faster. But nobody wants to be injected with a nasty bug! So instead I am trying to see if we can use a friendly bacteria (that wont make you poorly) to increase the number of immune cells in the body enough to be able to find and destroy the cancer again.
Because this is something that will be used as a treatment in people, we need to understand everything we possibly can about how it would work – to make sure it is safe! To do this, we can use animals such as mice and rats, because their bodies and their immune systems work in a very similar way to ours!
It’s my job to use this bacteria treatment on mice that have cancer, and see exactly what it is doing to the immune system all over the body. I can look at the skin where it is injected, in the lymph nodes where the immune cells get programmed and where they multiply, and in the cancer tumour to see what kinds of immune cells are there, what they look like and what they are doing. This gives us an idea of how the treatment works, and lets us make sure it is not doing anything harmful to the body.
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My Typical Day:
I’m usually up before the sun rises, so the first thing I do when I get into work is have some strong coffee! I make sure I have everything planned and ready for my day, and then I go into the lab to start new experiments, or continue others (some experiments take days!). Some days can be busier than others, and when I’m not in the lab you’ll find me at my desk analysing all my data, reading about new science discoveries or just chatting with the other scientists in my group.
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Read more
Being a scientist at a university means you have a lot of choice over what your work day looks like – everything is really up to you! When I have a big experiment day, it can sometimes be a long day, so I like to get started as early as I can. I usually eat my breakfast in work as soon as I get in, as well as having a strong cup of coffee (the fuel that most scientists live off!). Whilst eating my breakfast, I check my emails and run through my checklist for the experiment to make sure I understand everything and have everything I need for the day. Being prepared is key to make sure your experiments run smoothly (although even the most prepared scientists run in to problems outside their control, it happens ALL the time!). I like to make sure I have prepared everything I can the day before an experiment – things like printing off the protocols, and doing any calculations that I can.
Sometimes I can spend a long time in the lab at once – I work with living cells and they can be very sensitive, meaning you have to be constantly working on your experiment to make sure they stay happy and healthy (they don’t like to be left alone whilst you’re eating lunch!). Other times it’s a bit more relaxed, and I can pop in and out of the lab as often as I like. Some days I don’t have any experiments to work on in the lab. On these days I’ll be at my desk analysing all my data, and trying to understand what all the results mean, as well as planning future experiments. The results of our experiments usually guide what we need to do next – do we have an exciting new idea to follow? Or do we need to repeat something again to be sure? .
As well as working on our own research projects, scientists spend a lot of time learning about other new discoveries in their field. Every week, a different scientist will visit us and tell us about all their work, and we get to ask questions. These can be really useful in giving us new ideas! We also go to lots of conferences where we give talks to hundreds of scientists at once – this can be a bit scary the first time you do it, but it’s actually really fun and a great way to meet new people. It’s nice to share your hard work with others, and hear what they have to say – and its a really important part of being a scientist.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Friendly, curious, fun
What did you want to be after you left school?
This changed a lot! A climate scientist, volcanologist, architect, doctor
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Sometimes for talking too much!
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Coldplay, The 1975
What's your favourite food?
Spanish food! But also Indian...Thai...Italian...and fish and chips! (I love food)
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
To have a happy and healthy life, to be successful in my career, and maybe win the lottery??
Tell us a joke.
Why do you never see hippo's hiding in trees?.... Because they're good at it!
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