Question: what is your normal day like?

Oliver Gordon answered on 9 Jul 2020:

There’s a lot of variety in my days, and I think that’s my favourite bit. Some days it can be a case of being swamped with loads of ideas to try, loads of things to prepare for meetings and so on, and other days it can be very quiet because there’s not much progress you can make that day.

Normally, my days are a mix of sitting at my desk and programming something, going to my lab to set something up/check on an experiment (/help other people!), mixed in with some boring admin, emails and so on. Other days I help to teach our undergraduate students in their labs/workshops, travel to conferences to give talks, or give talks to try and convince people to join our university as new students.

Other times, all of this gets put on hold for something really really stupid fun. Last November I got to spent an entire week in Pakistan in a 5* hotel as part of a research trip, and in January I got to spend a week in Oxford at the UK’s synchrotron (think CERN in geneva but a bit smaller) as part of a small research team, getting to work in a lead lined control room with all the fancy buttons I didn’t understand in the slightest, haha.