• Question: What would be the best achievement you could accomplish in your field?

    Asked by Scarlett to Alex, Laura, Lesley, Richard, vediacan on 18 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Richard Prince

      Richard Prince answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      Hi Scarlett,
      Good to chat to you! My career has reached the stage where I know that I am unlikely to win a Nobel Prize. Let’s get that out of the way for a start. Hardly anyone does, and I think those who do, never start out with a plan to. They just want to do good science and then someone takes notice of just how GOOD that science is. So, no room for Sheldon Coopers in the real world.
      There are other things I am planning to achieve though. One is to get a professorship. In universities, no-one really takes much notice of you unless you are a professor (it’s called having a “chair”) and we very much need more professors of pharmacology at the University of Manchester so we can influence what the University does. Getting a chair is my number one priority.
      To do that I will have to achieve quite a lot to convince the University that I am good enough. I’ll do that by getting my work on lung function published in a top journal and by trying to be innovative in the way I teach. I got nominated by my students for a British Pharmacological Society teaching award this year, but I have to wait until December to find out if I’ve won. Winning this contest would also be a brilliant boost, so if you want to help a poor old man achieve his dreams, vote for me!
      Best wishes
      Richard

    • Photo: Laura Newton

      Laura Newton answered on 19 Jun 2015:

      Hi Scarlett!

      I guess the pinnacle of science is to get a Nobel Prize but given there’s like one a year it’s almost impossible. The top job in research is a professorship which is much more achievable! Then everyone has to listen to you and you can tell other people what experiments they should do.

      But if my research works and I can find a cure for skin damage, diabetes and Alzheimer’s it would be a great achievement! I would be very happy even helping being able to cure one of them 😉

      Thanks for your question!
      Laura 🙂

    • Photo: Vedia Can

      Vedia Can answered on 22 Jun 2015:

      Hi Scarlett!!

      Definitely finding a cure for Osteoarthritis and winning the Nobel Prize! 🙂

      Best Wishes,

      Vedia

    • Photo: Lesley Pearson

      Lesley Pearson answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      Since I work in Drug Discovery, I would say that the best achievement I could accomplish would be to be directly involved in curing a disease.

      One of the teams that I work alongside here recently published a molecule in Nature that has the potential to cure and protect against Malaria in a single treatment. That level of achievement is what I can aspire to!

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