Profile

Photo:

Izzy Newsham

    • About Me:

      I am a PhD student in the last 6 months of my studies and I live in Guildford with my partner. In order to keep myself (relatively!) sane while studying, I sing in a choir, go kayaking/canoeing and do boxercise classes.

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      Alongside of the above interests, food is very important to me. I regularly watch YouTube videos about cooking and use this as inspiration to plan out what meals to eat. My partner likes to BBQ (even in the winter!) so we frequently get to enjoy his BBQed food.
      For the last few years I have been getting into Korean cuisine, and the next dishes I want to try to make are ‘Japchae’ (noodles made out of sweet potatoes) and ‘Tteokbokki’ (rice cakes in a spicy sauce).

    • My pronouns are:

      My pronouns are she/her.

    • My Work:

      My PhD is about using computers to learn new things about biology. I find existing datasets about humans and use AI to try to make predictions about what goes on inside our bodies!

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      I have researched into two main areas so far. The first area is cancer detection – I find large datasets containing lots of data measured on patients with cancer, and use machine learning to predict which type of cancer (eg. lung cancer or kidney cancer) each patient has.
      The second area I work on is about genes and proteins and how they interact with each other. I am interested in finding out which genes/proteins interact with which other genes/proteins when we get viruses and diseases.

    • My Typical Day:

      Some days I go into the library, but many days I work from home. I aim to start work between 8 and 9am and get lunch around 12:30pm. I almost always make my own lunch to save money. Then I continue working until dinner time, around 5 or 6pm. Because I am in the last 6 months of my PhD, I often spend time editing my thesis in the evenings after dinner.

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      Even though all my work is sitting at my computer, the actual content of my work varies a lot. I aim to spend around 50% of my time writing my thesis, and the other 50% finishing off my analysis and coding. In the mornings I like to work on analysing results and generating figures (charts and diagrams that I can put in my thesis). It always takes much more time than I except to generate a figure!
      In the mid to late afternoons I like to focus on writing/editing.

    • What I'd do with the prize money:

      There are so many amazing scientists on this site – my chances of being voted are slim so I haven’t thought about that!
      As I am at the beginning of my career, I would probably use it to do something which helps me learn how to communicate my research to normal people(!)

    Candidate CV questions (extra)

    • Education:

      I went to St Ivo school and Hills Road Sixth Form College. I really enjoyed computer science A level (where I discovered you could literally code anything you could dream of!), so I chose to study computer science at Bristol.

    • Qualifications:

      GCSEs

      A levels (Computer science, Maths, German)
      AS levels (Music and Further Maths)

      MEng Computer Science

    • Work History:

      After getting my Masters degree, I got a job as research assistant at the University of Cambridge to work on cancer detection.

      Despite this job being a computational biology job, I hardly knew any biology (I hadn’t done biology at A level) and so I had to learn the biology on the job. It turned out I really liked applying my computational skills to biology, so I chose to continue this work into my PhD.

    • Current Job:

      PhD student (although not technically a job!)

      My PhD is at the University of Cambridge and started in 2020. I hope to finish in 2025!

      During my PhD, I did a 6 month internship at Accenture, which showed me how a company runs a research team.

    • Employer:

      University of Cambridge

    • My Interview

      • How would you describe yourself in 3 words?

        Tired PhD student 😅

        What did you want to be after you left school?

        Something to do with computer programming

        Were you ever in trouble at school?

        Nope! Once my whole class got a detention and I was very sad that I was in a detention.

        If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?

        Some kind of programming job, or potentially a kayaking/canoeing instructor.

        Who is your favourite singer or band?

        I listen to a wide variety of music so I couldn't pick one. One of my favourite genres is Disney music.

        What's your favourite food?

        Again, I couldn't pick one! Some favourites include dumplings, rice and dark chocolate.

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

        The ability to teleport, a kitchen island and my thesis to be finished

        Tell us a joke.

        What's a pirate's favourite programming language? R!