Emer – Graduate Phenotyping Technician

What is your role at MRC Harwell?

I’m a Graduate Phenotyping Technician here. We do different behavioural and metabolic tests on the mice, so normally we do a different phenotyping test each day in the mornings, and then maybe looking at the data in the afternoons

What is your background? Did you see yourself doing this kind of job when you were younger?

So before I got here, I did a biology Bachelor’s at York, and this is my first job out of uni, basically. I also had other bits of animal experience, which I think helps since I work with the animals here. So yeah, I guess this job is kind of bringing together the science, like the general understanding of genetics and how testing on animals works and then some animal experience that wasn’t with mice but still gives an understanding of just how you look after the animals, which is really helpful. That’s what I’m doing every day, basically.

No, I didn’t know I wanted to do this. I didn’t even really know that there would be a place that just did animal testing. I didn’t realise that there were centres for that.

I did know that I wanted to do biology and biomedical research. Particularly after uni I knew that I wanted to do biomedical research, so I was just looking for jobs that were really in that sector and stumbled across this.

What have you enjoyed most about being on the Graduate Programme?

Being on the grad scheme, we get a bit of extra experience as well. We can go and have tours of other places like we saw the Rosalind Franklin a few weeks ago, which was really interesting and get to see what other departments are doing as well and kind of like build up a picture of how it all fits together, like how you actually produce the mice in the first place and then the data after testing the mice. So it’s been really nice to see how it all comes together.

Yeah, I really enjoyed learning surgery as part of this as well. Takes a lot of training to learn how to do it and it definitely took me a long time to get there, but I think it’s just a really in-depth and really useful skill to have. And it’s really nice to try doing something where you have to be so precise all the way through.

What do you want to do next?

I think after this I want to do further study, get more into the research side so either a Master’s or a Ph.D. in neuroscience, probably.

It’s nice to be able to talk to the managers and get a bit of advice and tips on where to be looking, applications, and all of that.

What do you like to do outside of work?

Outside of work, I recently took up kickboxing and karate, and also like to relax with a book or catch up with friends.

Emer joined the MLC through our Graduate Development Programme. You can find out more about the programme as well as interviews with our other graduates on our Graduate Development Programme page.