Robert Mahen
- Current job title: Postdoctoral Research Scientist
- Current location: The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg, Germany
- Field of research: Biology of cell division
- Education history: BSc Biology with a Year in Industry, Imperial College, London; Associate of the Royal College of Science (2005); PhD, University of Cambridge (2011)
- Wellcome Trust awards: Four-year PhD Studentship, Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship
Tell us about your background.
I did my undergraduate biology degree at Imperial College London. As part of that I spent a year working in industry for GlaxoSmithKline. This got me interested in genetics, and I went on to do a Wellcome Trust-funded PhD in infection and immunity at the University of Cambridge. I'm currently working at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Germany.
Why did you choose your career?
Although as a child I was interested in insects and animals, I never knew that I wanted a career in academic research until the final year of my undergraduate degree. It was then - quite late, I suppose - that I saw how much fun being a scientist might be. I got hooked on cell biology once I started to realise how in many areas, little is known about how living things function.
How would you describe your job?
I work in an interdisciplinary lab involved with different areas such as cell biology, biophysics and microscopy. It's a mixture of hands-on experiments in a wet lab and more theoretical aspects, such as image analysis. It's fun and collaborative, and on a daily basis I control what I do - it's literally a case of thinking of feasible experiments and then doing then!
In lay terms, what is your science about?
The ability to self-replicate is a fundamental feature of living things. I'm trying to understand how cells perform this incredible feat that most man-made machines cannot, by making copies of themselves. I'm trying to understand how cells divide and maintain their DNA - both activities are important in cancer development.
We know many of the proteins that are essential for a cell to divide into two new cells. I'm trying to find out how these proteins combine into groups to form functional parts of the cell. I attach fluorescent tags to molecules I want to study - this allows me to follow their movement under a microscope while the cells they are in are still alive.
What is the ultimate aim of your work?
I want to learn how cells work from a purely theoretical perspective, and I also want to help understand what causes disease and how we can treat it better.
What are the difficulties and challenges of being a scientist, and how do you overcome them?
One of the main difficulties of doing lab work is that a great many experiments don't work - you might solve a technical problem only to get an unexpected result, meaning you have to alter your initial ideas. Also, it can be difficult to interpret results when so little is known about the area you're researching. It's a constant challenge, and you have to be very self-motivated, but it's one of the reasons I like the job. The speed of research can be frustrating, also - it takes five minutes to think of an experiment but five months to do it.
How has the Wellcome Trust award influenced your career decisions?
My PhD award gave me a lot of freedom - I had four years to pursue my research interests. Because I had that security, I didn't necessarily have to stay solely focused on one topic. I've ended up working on things now that I didn't know I would at the start of my PhD. The scheme has a very diverse year of training, so I got to learn about things you might not get the opportunity to learn on a 'normal' three-year PhD.
What is the best part about doing science?
The best thing for me is finding things out and, it's a cliché to say, I'm excited by discovery. It's amazing when you realise an experiment has worked and you're seeing something no one else has before. It doesn't happen often, and it might not be important, but just to have that feeling is the main reason I do science.
What music do you listen to at work?
I'm constantly listening to music when I'm working. As it's so easy to share and listen to music digitally now, I have a very broad taste, from rock to electronic and jazz.
What are your hobbies?
Hockey. During my PhD I played for Cambridge University 'Blues', and I was on a hockey pitch five days a week as well as being in the lab.
If you were not a scientist, you would be …
Bored! Probably trying to do something else that I find equally fun, such as sport.