I think that one of the things that has inspired me to be a scientist
is the fact that science provides you with the opportunity to combine two of the...
what I think are the most beautiful qualities of human beings...
that is reasoning -- the capacity to reason -- and creativity.
The way I think about it is that every morning, I wake up, it's like Alice in Wonderland.
You just wake up in the morning, and you think that I'm going to go down the rabbit hole today,
and I don't really know what I'm going to find out,
but it's that you don't know what you're going to find out
that makes it really fun.
I really think that science is fun because you have the opportunity to create
and discover things that nobody else in the world essentially knows.
Science itself... It's just a great feeling to be looking at things people have never looked at
and maybe finding something that is really, really new to the world,
and no one has ever experienced that.
Science is fun for me because I get to play with stuff, basically.
And I get to play with puzzles... actually, questions that are really important
for a person's life. If you actually get to answer the question and solve that puzzle,
you get to improve people's lives.
First of all, when I was in high school, I wasn't always sure that I would become a scientist
like many people do... that they always knew that's what they're going to be.
For me, it was more that I liked biology,
and I was always curious about the world and what's happening.
So, I enrolled in biology in university,
but I really didn't realize what I was getting myself into,
what science really is, and what being a scientist means.
And, I was surprised, especially during my Master's thesis
and my PhD how diverse of a job it is,
and now even as a post-doc, even more, I realize that it's not only,
or actually it's a very small proportion almost that we spend thinking on our own.
It's an incredibly diverse job and really interactive.
My mother has epilepsy. Watching her as a young child, going through epilepsy
and the situations that she goes through and conditions,
has inspired me... It's like, I can help someone else with that.
The knowledge that I can get from school, I incorporate that into research,
and from there, help find cures, help find treatments, and also maybe help people
to maintain and control their seizures more effectively,
so they can live a more normal life.
It's your opportunity to become, essentially,
the expert on a particular area that can potentially help many people
who are suffering from potential diseases and also help clinicians
who are also helping those individuals.
I think that learning about the history of humanity has been a very important part
of the inspiration for me.
Looking back in history, I sort of see how many people
have had an impact on society through science,
and it makes me realize that I could also play a role in shaping the world.
The science I do, I couldn't do alone.
I'm a biologist by training, but I need physicists, engineers, and mathematicians
to help me analyze my data, to model data, to have more insight on it.
So, we work really closely together, and we talk basically every day, on a day-to-day basis.
We teach each other a lot.
I also think science is fun because you have the opportunity to travel the world
and communicate with other scientists that have similar interests to you,
and you get to see and meet people that you
ordinarily wouldn't have the opportunity to do.
Sometimes we have advancements in science, but sometimes
we have a scientist to educate the public about how to go about this.
And, we have to have this crosstalk.
You're autonomous essentially. You are your own boss.
There's no right or wrong answers
because this is an area that nobody else really knows about.
You don't sit at a desk all day, but you also don't stand at a bench all day.
It's a mix of all of that, and it's a really flexible day...
how you want to structure your day and how you want it to look.
When I was an undergraduate, I took a course in evolution as a first year student,
and it presented a lot of the research in that field,
in a way that was accessible as a process in science, as opposed to just information.
This is really what's most interesting. We learn so much every day
and if you are interested in learning, then this is the best job you can have.
It's really rewarding when you see something that you've never seen before
or you've been to a place that nobody has ever been before.
So I guess that element of not knowing what you're going to see
makes it really fun, I think.
If science can shed light on this question
that people have been unable to answer for millennia,
in such a beautiful way, then science is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.
You have that opportunity to leave your mark years from now,
and you can impact generations and generations to come
and really have contributed and leave a lasting legacy.
So, all in all, I think that science is a great job, and it's a challenging job,
and it's never getting boring.
