Profile

Hi everyone, my name is Sammi! I live in Nottingham with my boyfriend. We love to watch musicals together, though he doesn’t love it when I sing along loudly out of tune, oops!

I love animals and nature. My favourite animals are llamas and bees. I’m scared of bears because I came face-to-face with a wild one once!

In my spare time, I enjoy circus acrobatics. I love hanging upside down from a hoop, silks or trapeze! I really enjoy performing and cannot wait until events can start up again. Have you ever been to the circus? What was your favourite part?

I am a neuroscientist, which means I study the brain. I look at how well babies’ brains can understand speech.

To do this, I use laser beams to look at how well the brains are working inside babies’ heads. Don’t worry, the lasers are harmless and don’t hurt the babies at all! Here are what the lasers look like on a babies head during the experiment.

As well as working in the labs running experiments, I also get to give talks to people all over the world. Sometimes I give talks in schools about what it is like to be a scientist. Other times I give talks to other scientists, telling them about my work and what we need to do next. I get very nervous before giving a talk, but I am always proud of what I’ve achieved when I’m done. Have you ever given a presentation? Did you get nervous too?

Because of covid-19 I have been working a lot from home, but the below timetable shows a typically day in the lab before that.

9am – arrive at work. I share my office with lots of other scientists so we usually start the day with a cup of tea and a chat.

9:30am – get the lab ready. My work uses lots of machines and computers so I need to make sure everything is turned on and working correctly. I check the machine that controls the lasers to make sure there are no issues. I have to attach each laser to a hat which can take some time as there are lots of wires!

10:30am – start the experiments. I run my experiments on real people, so when they arrive I will talk to them about my work and what they will be doing that day. I put my equipment on the baby’s head to monitor their brains – this is just like wearing a funny hat, it doesn’t hurt them. The harmless lasers send lights to the brain and measures how hard the brain is working.
My lab is in a soundproofed room, which means you can’t hear noises from outside the lab. This is important for me as some of my research needs complete silence.

12:30pm – lunch time!! What do you like to eat for lunch?

1:30pm – if I am testing more children, I will go back into the lab and run the experiments again. Every child is different, so you never know how each session will go. Sometimes we get through the experiment quickly, but other times we take lots of breaks and play lots of games with the children and their families. I once hid in a cupboard during a game of hide and seek and got locked in!

4:30pm – tidy up. Doing science with children can get quite messy, so I tidy up the lab. There are usually lots of toys that need to go back in my toy box. The machines I use are very expensive, so we clean them carefully and pack them away every night. With any spare time I might do my paperwork or practice for my next talk, and then…

Home time!