Profile

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Brittney Chere

My CV

  • Education:

    • Ecole Active Bilingue, France
    • Internation School of Brussels, Belgium
    • ACS Cobham, England
    • Santa Rosa High School, California, USA

  • Qualifications:

    • High School Diploma
      • GPA = 4.7 (US qualification system)
      • English, maths, science, language, history, etc.
      • taught me how to work diligently and make myself accountable for my own work.
    • BA in Psychology and a BSc in Human development
      • University of California, Davis
      • Learnt all about developmental psychology and brain development
      • Learnt about how research plays such an important role in how we know all of this information
      • Gave me the base knowledge that I need for my job and future career
    • MSc in Educational Neuroscience
      • Birkbeck, University of London and Institute of Education at University of College London
      • learnt about research more specific to this field that I’m interested in (education and neuroscience)
      • ran my own research project and wrote it up as a thesis which gave me great insight into doing my own big research project and how to write up a big dissertation.

  • Work History:

    • Babysitter
      • babysat a boy for 2 years for 3 hours each week
      • babysat for a few other families occasionally when needed
    • Research Assistant
      • Research lab at University of California, Davis, California
      • 2 years working 9 hours per work (part time job with no pay)
      • learned all the basic research skills that have helped me to this day
      • got to run my own research project and write it up
    • Research Assistant
      • Research lab at Durham University
      • 1 year working 37 hours per work (full time job with pay)
      • helped run 3 separate research projects and kept learning more research skills

  • Current Job:

    PhD Student

    • Birkbeck, University of London
    • 3 year program where you run 4-5 experiments that you then write up into a big thesis
    • I run the Research Centre’s Social Media accounts (Twitter: @BirkbeckBabylab, Facebook:@BirkbeckBabylabLDN, Instagram: birkbeckbabylab) where we update the public and other researchers about the work we are doing.

    • About Me:

      I’m an American in London getting my PhD in psychology. I love hanging out with my friends and family, adventuring around London and the world, going to the cinema, and reading in the park. I love talking psychology and sharing all the ups and downs of my life in the hopes that it’ll help people, so send on over your questions!

    • Read more

      I live in London with my partner. I’m originally form the US but have grown up in lots of different places. I love going on walks in the park and wish desperately I had a dog. The first thing I do in the morning is have a cup of coffee. I love watching tv and movies and catching up with my friends. I love skiing and wish I could do it easily all year long. I’m currently trying to bring 3 plants back to life that don’t seem to be doing so well… I love cooking but also enjoy a good take out- my favourite is Greek and Indian food. One of my favourite things to do is just to walk around central London or any other new place with no plan and just go wherever my heart takes me (who doesn’t love ice cream on a rainy day!?)

    • Read more

      I have parents and their babies come in to take part in my experiments to help me understand how babies and children develop. Mostly what I’m trying to do is to run experiments to test a hypothesis I have, for example: do babies like colourful and moving toys? To decide if this is true I can bring babies into the lab and show them an image of a toy (see picture below), and use this special computer that tracks their eyes to see if they’re looking at it on the screen. If they look at this image a lot more than say, a grey ball that isn’t moving, then I can say that yes, babies like colourful and moving toys more than single-coloured and non-moving toys.

      Here is a picture to see what my lab and an experiment looks like: 

      This is my work bio where you can read a bit more about me and the research that I’m interested in: http://www.cbcd.bbk.ac.uk/people/students/brittney-chere

      This is the Babylab building where I work and do my research:

    • My Typical Day:

      My time is really flexible so I can really make my days be whatever I want. This is good, but having a routine is always helpful! My typical day starts at 9am with a cup of coffee. I then look through my emails or the news to help me wake up and then slowly get into work. Once my brain gets started I’ll work on a few things until lunch time and then have a nice break. I’ll then get back to work and go until about 5:30. Most of my day is spent on the computer working on my own, and sometimes I’ll have meetings with my supervisor (basically my boss) or other researchers.

    • Read more

      In normal times I’m in an office space with all of the other PhD students. What I actually do each day changes a lot, from running experiments with families, thinking about new studies, actually making the studies, writing up my studies to publish in journal or to go into my big PhD thesis, or analysing my data and hoping I can make sense of it!! I always have an hour lunch because it’s important to take a break and it’s great having a catch up with friends 🙂

      • Here’s an example of the a simple study you can try out to get an idea of what they’re like! https://research.sc/task/3885253 (this is a preview of an example experiment and won’t actually save your data or be used for any research purposes).
      • This is an information page from one of my studies if you want to see what a real study advertisement might look like (it’s now complete so the links won’t work!): http://www.cbcd.bbk.ac.uk/research/noise-and-learning

    • What I'd do with the prize money:

      If I had prize money I would put it towards a project that brings families and research together.

    • My Interview

      • How would you describe yourself in 3 words?

        social and curious researcher

        What did you want to be after you left school?

        researcher

        Were you ever in trouble at school?

        yes, though nothing too serious

        Who is your favourite singer or band?

        Beyonce

        What's your favourite food?

        cheese

        If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!

        to live closer to my best friends so I can see them all the time, that I could sleep in everyday, that I could drink as much coffee as I wanted to without not being able to sleep

        Tell us a joke.

        I went to Waterstones and asked the woman for a book about turtles, she said "hardback?" and I was like "yeah, and little heads".

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