• Question: what got you into doing science?

    Asked by yangtze12 to Adam, Emily, Thad, Thomas on 10 Mar 2015. This question was also asked by nile 5.
    • Photo: Adam Milligan

      Adam Milligan answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      I have always loved animals and nature – I grew up on a farm and I watched TV shows about animals in far away countries so I have always been interested, and when I had to choose what job I wanted as a grown-up I chose to be a scientist so I could travel to cool places and work with animals!

    • Photo: Thomas Clements

      Thomas Clements answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      I can remember being very young and seeing a large T. Rex model next to a skeleton. I really wanted to know how they knew it looked like and how they new what colour it was.

      As I got older I decided that I didn’t want to work on dinosaurs (although I still love them) but I was really interested in how fossils form. I use chemistry, physics and biology so I thought that palaeontology was an amazing subject for me.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      I remember watching David Attenborough’s nature documentaries from a very young age and instantly becoming obsessed with animals. Around this time, my family moved to America, and I found myself surrounded by lots of new and exciting animals to learn about: snakes, lizards, buffalo, prairie dogs! I was completely fascinated by animals. When I started school out there we did a topic on rainforests and my teacher told us a story about this tree and all the animals living on and around the tree. Again, I remember being completely amazed about how important one tree could be.

      Over time all that fascination with the natural world has grown into a love for science, because I find that science is a great way to discover more about the world around us!

    • Photo: Thaddeus Aid

      Thaddeus Aid answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      I love computers, I have been using computers since I was about 6-7. At first I loved playing video games (I still do!), then I loved programming them, then building them, then making them talk to each other.

      I worked as an IT administrator for many years (with a couple of years as a Video Game Tester) before returning to University to get my degree in Computer Science, I wanted to become a Games Programmer and Designer. But something interesting happened while I was at University, I learned that I love doing research. I got involved in a project that was helping people recover after brain damage and the act of creating new knowledge was so much fun that I figured that it would be a more fun job than making video games (it is, I have done both). When I graduated from University I started looking for a PhD (to become a scientist and researcher) and I looked at a number of different places. Oxford was at the top of my list because they were offering a program that allowed me to mix my love of computers, with my love of research, with my love of evolution (evolution is awesome). I could not believe my luck!

      Now I spend my time using my computer to create new knowledge about evolution, best job in the world!

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