"The Master of Biomedical Science has been a great route into research... Building skills in areas like statistics and imaging analysis has been invaluable. I also found the science communication subjects particularly useful especially for getting the most out of conferences; you can do the most brilliant research, but you also have to be able to explain it."
I did a Bachelor of Science here at the University of Melbourne and then I took a gap year to work out what to do next. I decided to look at the prefrontal cortex because it’s a control hub affected by neurological disorders like depression and schizophrenia; having had experience with depression and anxiety, I wanted to understand why it happened and how this area works.
The Master of Biomedical Science has been a great route into research. I’ve ended up looking at how the prefrontal cortex sends modulatory signals to the rest of the brain to make decisions based on the environment.
I’ve joined the Neural Networks Lab at the Florey Institute, which is one of the largest labs at the Institute. Even though its big, everyone gets along really well and we all support each another.
The opportunities we have in the Parkville research precinct are great. We’re exposed to lots of guest speakers from other institutions, opportunities to network with other researchers and I’ve even been working with world leading researchers in the States. We’re collaborating on the back end of my project around a behavioural set-up, and I’m hoping to visit them during this project.
The subjects in the Master of Biomedical Science have all been very useful. Building skills in areas like statistics and imaging analysis has been invaluable. I also found the science communication subjects particularly useful especially for getting the most out of conferences; you can do the most brilliant research, but you also have to be able to explain it.
A PhD looks to be the next step for me. I’m still deciding whether to remain in research or pursue a more clinical path after that.