Profile
Leanne Milton-Harris
My CV
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Education:
1998-2005: Tuxford Comprehensive School, Nottinghamshire
2005-2010: University of St Andrews, Fife.
2010-2015: University of Birmingham, West Midlands
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Qualifications:
12 GCSEs, grades A*-B
AS levels – Law, General studies
A levels – Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Psychology
First class honours degree in Chemistry
PhD in molecular biology -
Work History:
Sales assistant, Woolworths, Newark – 2004-05
Childcare assistant, SH Childminders, Newark – 2004-05
Cleaner, University of St Andrews – 2006-07
Waitress/kitchen porter, University of St Andrews – 2006-08
Industrial trainee, Pfizer, Kent – 2008-09
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Mancini lab, University of Sussex – 2015-2019 -
Current Job:
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Sussex (since July 2019).
I work as part of the Giamas lab in the Biochemistry department.
I work in the lab doing research, I teach undergraduate students and I supervise undergraduate and postgraduate student projects in the lab.
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About Me:
Hi, I’m Leanne! I’m a biochemist, working in a University lab in Brighton. I love music, I play trumpet and I love to play board games with my friends!
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Hi! My name is Leanne, I’m 32 and I live in Brighton with my husband Ed. I’m very lucky to live near the sea, so I spend a lot of my free time on the beach and I love to swim in the sea when it’s warm enough.
I play the trumpet in two bands, it’s really fun! Lots of different music, and sometimes we get to perform. My favourite music to play is jazz, it sounds great on a trumpet. I listen to a lot of music, I like things I can sing along to!
I also like to read, I like detective stories and big complicated stories about magic and dragons.
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I’m a biochemist – that means I use both biology and chemistry to understand how molecules work in the body. I study things called proteins, because proteins are very important for everything that happens in your body!
Proteins are huge long chains of molecules fastened together in a row. They get folded up into all sorts of 3D shapes, and the unique shape of a protein makes it work. One of the things I do is try and look at the shape of a protein molecule. They’re tiny so we have to use clever tools to do this! I use two things, a really big magnet that lets us look at how the atoms in the molecule vibrate (called an NMR machine), and something called a synchrotron, a particle accelerator that lets us fire super-charged X-rays at protein crystals!
Another thing I look at is how the protein molecules stick together. Proteins don’t work on their own, they make groups called complexes to do their jobs. Understanding what these complexes do can tell us all sorts of things about how the body works!
Sometimes things can go wrong with this – the protein can stop being a part of it’s normal complex, or start making new groups, or the body can start making more or less protein, or making it in the wrong place – and when things go wrong, people can get sick. If we can understand what the protein should be doing and what happens when it goes wrong, we can try and fix it. That’s a big part of what I do, we use all of the information we have about the proteins to make new medicines to try and help people who are sick.
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My Typical Day:
I get up when my alarm goes off – I don’t like early mornings but my lab is quiet first thing! I head into my lab and turn on all the equipment I need for the day – some of it takes a while to warm up (time for a coffee!). Then I go check on all of the experiments I left running overnight. I use bacteria to make proteins for me, so I spend a lot of the day making sure they grow properly and harvesting the protein from them. Then I have to separate my protein from everything else in the bacteria soup! I have to use lots of different chemicals, mixing things together and then separating them – it takes a long time but at the end I have lovely clean protein to work with! Then I can plan my next experiments, using the protein to test new medicines, or to look at how it behaves with other proteins.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
Protein explorers! New hands-on activity so students can have a go at some of the techniques I use everyday. Purify a protein from a mixture, make some protein crystal and look at some 3D structures on the computer.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Friendly, creative, loud!
What did you want to be after you left school?
A scientist!
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Sometimes, mainly for talking too much in class
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Stereophonics (for today, it changes a lot!)
What's your favourite food?
Toast - it goes with everything! Or Thai food, I love a good pad thai
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
I wish I was a much better trumpet player, I wish I could travel anywhere in the world whenever I want, and I wish I had a puppy!
Tell us a joke.
What did the cheese say when it saw itself in the mirror? Halloumi!
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