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Evolution is the gradual change of living things over time, and it makes everything that is alive in the entire world better at coping with the challenges of life. When you think of evolution, you might think of stuffy old men, with big grey beards, looking at dusty old fossils and imaging what life might have been like millions of years ago. But in my job, I use things which evolve really fast, which means I don’t have to wait millions of years to see things happen – I can see changes happening over a few weeks!

But I’m not just about the science! I also love playing music (I’m a singer/song writer), writing poems (have a look at what I want to do with the money to find out more), running, cooking, travelling, and sleeping (although sometimes my job steals it from me).

My ideal typical day would go something like this – early morning run, arrive in the lab to find my bacteria had done exactly what I was expecting them to do, collect all the results and write it down, realise my results were really exciting and guaranteed to get me a gold star from my boss.

However, my actual typical day goes more like this – sleep through my alarm (and so nearly miss my train), arrive in the lab (which smells pretty bad because of all the bacteria) to find my bacteria have done the complete opposite of what I expected them to do, collect the results and write them down, realise I made a mistake and have to repeat the whole thing again.

And yet I still love science… scientists are nothing special, we’re just paid to be curious.