Profile
Antonis Asiminas
My CV
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Education:
2004 Pythagoreio High School, Samos, Greece
Science Branch: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology2010 BSc Chemistry, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Hons Biochemistry2012 MSc Biochemistry and Molecular Metabolism, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
2016 PhD Neuroscience, University of Edinburgh, UK
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Work History:
2008 Lab Technician in Clinical Biochemistry, Samos General Hospital, Samos, Greece
2009 Science Tutor, Thessaloniki, Greece
2010 Research Assistant, Chemistry Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
2013 Neuroscience Tutor, School of Medicine, University of Edinburgh, UK
2016 Postdoctoral Resrach Fellow, University of Edinburgh, UK
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Current Job:
Postdoctoral Resrach Fellow, University of Edinburgh, UK
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About Me:
I like all things science, pistachio ice cream and nature documentaries
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I grew up on a Greek island and I know how to make cheese, wine and produce olive oil. I now live in Edinburgh with my wife and my cat. When I’m not in the lab, I like to spend time in my garden, make up new recipes and watching nature documentaries. Hearing the opening theme from Planet Earth brings tears to my eyes.
This is my cat Nero. Friends tell me she looks like Toothless from ‘How to train your dragon’ -
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I study how the brain changes as we grow up and how that affects the things we can learn and remember. I work with rats and I teach them things pretty much like you teach a dog to sit or bring the ball you throw back to you. All these different tricks require slightly different brain areas. So when I train my rats to do a trick (for example find their way in a maze or remember which objects the saw before) I can get a good idea is certain parts of their brain are working in the right way. Well it turns out that depending on how old a rat is, it can learn different tricks. With that knowledge we can predict which parts of the brain work and which don’t at different ages.
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My Typical Day:
A typical day includes training rats to do tricks, analysing data I collect and making graphs on my computer, and meeting other scientists to talk about experiments and how to analyse our data.
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I spend most of my day playing with rats. I mainly show them different objects and then I see if they remember them and for how long.
The selves in my experiments’ room look like those in a kindergarten.I also spend time analyse my data and speaking to other scientists. One of the coolest things in my job is to visit other placed in the world to attend conferences and learn experimental techniques. I’ve been to Japan, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, and USA
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Curious, excited, and always hungry
What did you want to be after you left school?
A chemist and wine maker
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Yeap, I used to enjoy being the smart in the class so I ended up in many arguments with my teachers.
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Tool
What's your favourite food?
Cheese
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
Being able to speak every language, being able to travel instantly around the world, never get old.
Tell us a joke.
What did one charged atom say to the other? I got my ion you.
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