Profile
Alice Rhind-Tutt
My CV
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Education:
I went to Leighswood School for primary, and then to Aldridge Comprehensive for Secondary. After 6th form I went to Liverpool University to do a masters degree in physics, and then got my job as PhD student at Sheffield.
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Qualifications:
GCSES: Maths, English Lit, English Lang, Biology, Chemistry, Physics: A*
French, History, Graphics, Music, Religious Studies:A
Additional Maths: C
IT: DistinctionAS Level French: B
A-Level Maths: A
A-Level Physics: B
A-Level Chemistry: BDegree: MPhys (2:1)
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Work History:
Life guard (age 15-18)
Saxophone and Piano teacher (age 16-20)
Primary school helper (age 19)
Outreach presenter (Age 18-now)
Summer research placement (Age 21)
PhD Student (Age 22-now) -
Current Job:
PhD student
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About Me:
I’m a 22 year old PhD student at the University of Sheffield. I love my job and teaching about science, but besides that I enjoy walking in the peak district, playing football, and cuddling my two kittens.
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I live in Sheffield with my boyfriend and our two kittens, Zeus and Frankie. My pronouns are she/her. I’m originally from the Black Country, near Birmingham, and I’ve also lived in Liverpool and Ottawa, the capital city of Canada. I support Liverpool FC and play for the Women’s Chemistry Football Team. We don’t win very often but it’s good fun and good exercise! On weekends I hang out with my little cousins (they’re 9, 8, and 1) and take them to see wildlife, on walks through the peak district, or to cool museums if it’s raining. My favourite is the planetarium. I’m also interested in conservation and sustainable living, so I’m lucky to live down the road from a zero-waste shop. Did you know Sheffield is the greenest city in the UK? My favourite shows are Brooklyn 99 and Friends!
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My work involves making tiny balls of gold (so tiny you can’t see them with the naked eye) and attaching them to strands of DNA. DNA is like 2 pieces of string twisted round each other – a bit like when your earphones twist up in your pocket! If any of you have been for an x-ray, you’ll know that it’s a way of taking images of our bones. We can see bones in an x-ray because they’re dense, but we can’t see skin and tissue because they are much less dense. This is the same for gold vs DNA. Gold is very dense, so it shows up well on the x-ray, but DNA does not. This is why we attach gold to the DNA, if we can see the gold moving, we know the DNA is moving too! Another way of doing this is by using things that glow when you shine light on them. This is called “fluorescence”. By attaching fluorescent particles to the DNA I can detect where they’re glowing, so I know where the DNA is too. I watch how the DNA moves to see if it’s broken or not, and I can add other things like proteins (little workers in your body that make everything run properly) that might change how the DNA moves too. Proteins are responsible for lots of jobs, like copying DNA, building muscle, and moving things around your body. If these proteins aren’t doing their job properly they can damage DNA in human bodies and cause illnesses. My group look at lots of different illnesses, including HIV, dementia, flesh eating infections, and some nasty symptoms that appear in new born babies. We hope that if we can find out what causes these illnesses we can find a way to prevent or cure them!
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My Typical Day:
One of the best parts of my job is that every day I’m doing something different. I get to work in lots of different labs in different places, so I always hit my 10000 steps a day! If I’m in the lab I’m making gold or proteins to look at using my x-ray machine or under a microscope. I put on my gloves and goggles and mix lots of different things together, a bit like baking! After that I test what I’ve made to see if it’s the right size, shape and type to run experiments on.
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I work mostly at the University of Sheffield but in different departments, biology, chemistry, and physics. In case that wasn’t enough variety, I also travel down to Oxford sometimes to work with a company called Evotec, who help with some of the things I have to make, and to use the Diamond Light Source, a big synchrotron that gives out a beam of x-rays. This is where I make sure my tiny balls of gold are the right size, and look at the gold attached to DNA to see it moving. My typical day I am in the lab making things by mixing lots of different stuff together. Some of the things I make need to be cooked in the oven, frozen in the freezer, or even microwaved! This can take all day, and sometimes a whole week or overnight. When it’s time for lunch I have to wash my hands really well to make sure I don’t accidentally eat anything dangerous, and then I take a break from science to eat lunch with my friends. Usually in the afternoon it’s time to look at what I’ve cooked up, so I take it to my microscope or x-ray machine to look at it more closely. If I have a problem or good results I go to see my boss, and we talk about what I could try doing next. After work my group sometimes go to the pub for a drink, and to talk about everything from our science to politics to funny stories!
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I would want to open up my lab and offer a chance to spend the day as a scientist! There’s lots more to it than just wearing goggles and writing stuff down, and I would like to be able to do a lab open day for anyone who wants to come.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Enthusiastic, disorganised, creative
What did you want to be after you left school?
I had no idea!
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Yes, I got sent out of class a few times for answering back to the teacher
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Any Musical
What's your favourite food?
Dominos!
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
I wish I could speak other languages fluently, talk to animals, and travel round the world
Tell us a joke.
Never trust an atom, they make up everything
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