• Question: Does technology have a big impact on your work/research?

    Asked by anon-196308 to Sebastian, Paddy, Lee, Jennifer, Fiona, Eleanor on 5 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Jennifer Harris

      Jennifer Harris answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      Technology had a lot of impact on my research during my PhD as there were a number of machines used to conduct experiments such as the Confocal Microscope for imaging lymph nodes. Technology has an indirect impact on my work at the moment in Policy, as there is a lot of interest in using digital and artificial intelligence in healthcare and research.

    • Photo: Fiona Scott

      Fiona Scott answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      Hi Carina,

      Technology has had a huge impact on my research. I have a digital lab notebook to keep track of all my experiments. I am able to access data from another lab from my desk thanks to networks set up between computers and I use robots to carry out some lab work for me! Chekc out the chemputer on youtube. It’s going to free up a lot of my time for analysing data rather than running experiments – but hopefully not replace chemists entirely!

    • Photo: Sebastian Cosgrove

      Sebastian Cosgrove answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      Massive! My work is currently looking at new technologies to change the way we do practical chemistry in the labs. Traditionally, chemistry is usually done by mixing things around in a round-bottomed shape flask. This does work, but it is usually not the most efficient way – it can take a long time and also uses a lot of energy!

      I work using new technology to do something called flow chemistry. This is different to the traditional chemistry because instead of doing the reaction in flasks, you do it in tubes by pumping the chemical reactions continuously. The tubes are much smaller than flasks so the reactions happen a lot more quickly, meaning we can make chemicals much quicker.

      This is a new way of doing chemistry, but the advancements in new technology, such as better computers and flow pumps, means that we are getting better and better at this every day. We couldn’t do this without all the different technology that is available to us!

    • Photo: Lee Steinberg

      Lee Steinberg answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      I do all of my work using incredibly powerful computers. As processing power improves, we are able to do more and more intense calculations. So yes, technology has a huge impact on what I do!

    • Photo: Eleanor Senior

      Eleanor Senior answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      In a word, definitely. Half of my PhD is bioinformatics which is using computers to solve problems and design experiments and work with really big sets of information. There is of course all the high-tech lab equipment we have, such as microscopes and flow cells.

    • Photo: Paddy Sudhakar

      Paddy Sudhakar answered on 6 Mar 2019:

      yes indeed, I rely a lot of state of the art softwares and hardware to do my analysis since it involves huge datasets. Without technological advancements, my work would be impossible.

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