Question: What do you think your biggest contribution to science is?

  1. I think my biggest contribution so far is developing a method to detect and measure contamination of engine oil in aircraft. The problem is quite common in many types of aircraft but no one could figure out how to tell if there was contamination, except at really high levels. I used a high-tech instrument called a gas chromatograph chemical ionisation mass spectrometer (that’s a mouthful I know) to figure out a way to tell if the oil is contaminated.

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  2. I think my biggest contribution to science is what I’m working on at the moment, as I’m contributing directly to improving how forensic scientists can analyse DNA. I’ve been able to evaluate new methods and improve the current methods used in forensic laboratories to enable them to improve the results they get from degraded sources of DNA – this is something that has been a big challenge for forensic scientists. For example, I’ve been able to show how to improve the results forensic scientists get from the currently used DNA profiling methods, enabling them to get better results when the DNA amount is very low.

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  3. I think my biggest contribution to science is helping other scientists. I help them test their theories of how they believe things work in computer models. I help them realize their ideas.

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  4. I also think my current project because it has given me the opportunity to work closely with doctors to see what I find means clinically. My previous work has really been the step before this, where the doctors had a question and we have begun looking for ways to explain/answer their question. I am now at the point where we have some answers and we are trying to see what impact this new knowledge will have on patient treatment, how we can improve reproductive health. I guess from a basic science point of view, science in the clinical setting is only useful if it can be translated from ‘bench to bedside’. By identifying the microorganisms within the upper reproductive tract and relating these to patient symptoms and tissue damage (pathology), we should be able to provide a treatment to reduce syptoms (pain and infertility).

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  5. I think my biggest contribution to science is yet to come 😉

    Oh, I have made small contributions, improving artificial intelligence here, finding a better way to read graphs there, but ultimately I would like to create a game that can use the power of many players’ creativity to find answers to some difficult questions.

    🙂

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Comments

  1. These are all very interesting answers. Thank you for informing me.

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