I'm a research scientist at University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK.
For a great summary of who I am as a scientist and where I stand today, follow this link to a great profile about me at a science blog:
link to profile
Up until very recently, I was working within the Mitochondrial Research Group with Doug and Bob.
I did my Ph.D. at Duke University with Haifan Lin (who is now at Yale).
I've got a couple of published scientific papers and am working on a couple more now.
I'm married to a wonderful man who is also a scientist and have 2 adorable sons.
I'm also a big fan of Lois McMaster Bujold and her writing. Through her encouragement (she's awesome), I'm also a published author of a different kind. I wrote an essay about her depiction of biology in her science fiction series (the Vorkosigan books) and relating it to the state of scientific research today. My essay is published in The Vorkosigan Companion. (see the first page, and the table of contents with my name on it if you scroll down)
The Vorkosigan Companion was nominated for a Hugo Award (science fiction award) in the "Related Book" category for 2009 but didn't get it.
Anyway, here's the first bit that essay that's in the book, just for fun:
Biology in the Vorkosiverse and Today
Tora, Ph.D.
"All true wealth is biological."
—Aral Vorkosigan in Mirror Dance
Lois McMaster Bujold’s science fiction series that takes place in the "Vorkosiverse" is excellent for many reasons. One of them is Bujold’s exceptional grasp of biology, including her ability to imagine and depict future biological technologies and their social implications.
Though she began writing the series more than twenty years ago, the sound basis for the biology in her Vorkosiverse books makes the future biological technologies in them still relevant today. Even more satisfying to a biologist, these technologies do not become the bad guy, as is common for science fiction stories such as Frankenstein and Jurassic Park. The good and evil both come not from the technology, biological or otherwise, but from within the characters.
Bujold does not thrust these biological technologies on her readers as extraneous frills, but rather the technologies are an intricate part of the plot, the setting, or even the characterization in her stories. In one scene, after an assassination attempt against them by poisonous gas fails, Cordelia Vorkosigan tells her husband Aral not to worry, that all they need to procreate is "...two somatic cells and a replicator. Your little finger and my
big toe, if that’s all they can scrape off the walls aft er the next bomb..." (Barrayar). That quote alone implies a whole area of advanced reproductive technology: the ability to clone somatic cells and differentiate them into viable eggs and sperm, outside of the body; as well as the ability to grow the fertilized egg into a baby.
