Profile
Luke Hillary
My CV
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Education:
Sir Harry Smith Community College (Whittlesey, near Peterborough)
Stanground College (Peterborough, for A-levels)
University of Sheffield (Masters in Biological Sciences)
University of York (PGCE)
Bangor University (PhD)
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Qualifications:
GSCEs in Maths, Science, English, German, Humanities, Religious Studies, Art, Business studies)
A-levels in Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, AS-level Physics
Undergraduate masters degree in Biochemistry and Microbiology from the University of Sheffield
PGCE in Secondary School Science teaching, specialising in Chemistry, from the University of York
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Work History:
During school – newspaper delivery boy, kitchen assistant
During university – stagehand/ stage manager for live music venues in Sheffield (I once said Amy Winehouse was really short without realising she was stood right behind me)
Post-graduate researcher (I was working towards a PhD at York before deciding it wasn’t for me. I retrained as a teacher and then 5 years later, decided to come back to research)
Chemistry teacher (Various schools in North Yorkshire)
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Current Job:
Research officer – Environmental Virology (Bangor University)
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About Me:
I’m a viral ecologist, which mainly involves digging up soil from different parts of a farm and figuring out which viruses are there and why. When I’m not in work or in lockdown, you can find me walking around the countryside of north Wales.
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I’m a big sci-fi fan who will passionately argue why Star Trek is better than Star Wars. I’d never flown outside the UK before starting the PhD but have now been to a few places in America and Europe for conferences and fieldwork (digging a soil pit in a desert is exhausting, even in February). No pets, unless you count the bacteria and viruses I have in the lab! I think it’s really important to share what real research is like with the public.
Me below Mt Teide on a Tenerife field course…
…but it’s not all fun and games.
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I use two approaches, quantitative pcr or high throughput sequencing, to look for specific viruses or the whole viral community in soil or sewage sludge. A typical experiment would involve me going to a sewage treatment works and taking a samples of wastewater or sludge or going to a farm and taking samples of soil.
Raw sewage ready for sampling
I get these back to the lab and then test them for certain viruses like coronavirus or remove all the viruses and analyse them all together.
Viral concentrate
This data makes me happy!
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My Typical Day:
I very rarely have a “typical” day. I might be collecting samples from farms or sewage works, processing these in the lab, or analysing the data on a big supercomputer from the office or home.
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I usually get up fairly early before heading into the lab. I’m probably one of the few scientists who’s kept working throughout the lockdown. When I get in, I’ll grab my sampling kit and drive to the sewage works to take a sample of wastewater. This can be pretty smelly and I make sure the sampling bottles are sealed tight. I don’t want that leaking in the car! Once I’m back in the lab, I and the other lab scientists will concentrate the sewage and set up the experiments for detecting coronavirus. These are run overnight and we get the results the next morning. Sometimes I’ll have a video meeting with the rest of the team who can’t be in because of social distancing. Work can be pretty intense but we all chip in where we can.
Before lockdown, I would do similar work but on soil samples that had, or had not had treated sewage sludge added to them.
Taking a rest during sampling
There’s about 30 gigabytes of data in this picture
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I would love to spend this money on running a remote project on microbes with a school that might find it difficult to visit a university. During the pandemic, I helped with a project for university students that allowed them to do some of their practical classes from home. It would be great to see if we could run a similar project with a school in the local area.
Students would find bacteria from their local environment, grow them and then find out what they need to survive.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Friendly, curious, thorough
What did you want to be after you left school?
A scientist
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Occasionally, but nothing serious.
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Amaranthe (I'm listening to a lot of metal at the moment)
What's your favourite food?
Mexican or anything with a bit of spice to it
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
Successful scientific career, win the lottery, world peace
Tell us a joke.
Why are bacteria bad at maths? Because they multiply by dividing!
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