It’s been a pretty frenzied week, finishing off writing a major grant application, a busy schedule here at Newcastle then a series of talks on Thursday and Friday. One of Thursday’s events was particularly interesting – the Annual Linnean Debate at Burlington House. This year it was on synthetic biology and it was a striking experience being in a place that was such a cradle of biological research.   I was impressed, not only by the setting (if you’ve been to Burlington House you’ll know it’s pretty grand with busts of Darwin, Wallace et al looking down) but by the organisation of the event.  It was held jointly with the London Evolutionary Research Network which is run by London postgraduate students and this event was organised and moderated by post grads from UCL. They were impressive in their efficiency and enthusiasm throughout the harrowing experience of chariring the debate. I was reminded of my own post grad days at St Mary’s Medical School, round the corner in Paddington, and the terrors of my own first rpublic speaking and research presentation.  It can be a defining moment of any career and we tend to forget quite how intimidating the moment can be in those early years.

Looking back, I’m reminded what a productive time that was for me and I certainly published quite a few papers. The work was intense but it was very satisfying being able to focus so closely on a particular piece of research.  Publication and communicating the results was an important part of the job and that ethos has stayed with me over the years.  Long hours were spent in the lab and there was a great camaraderie among the researchers who worked and socialised together.

But there was one evening when I was alone but could have done with someone else in the lab and I look back on it as a lesson in health and safety. I was working as a CASE student at a particular company in Kent – it had better remain nameless – and I had decided to spend a couple of extra hours one evening on some lab work.  I started labelling up an experiment but the marker pen seemed to be running out – or so I thought until I gave it a good shake.  Ink spurted out all over a brand new computer terminal.  Annoying but not disastrous, I thought.  Using my knowledge of chemistry I got out some solvent to clean off the ink.  What I hadn’t known was how acetone acts on plastic keyboards.  Worse was to follow. As I was examining the melting keys with growing alarm, I suddenly remembered the experiment I had running in the lab next door where water was being pumped from an aquarium through a glass column.  That wouldn’t have been a problem except for the gunk in the bottom of the aquarium that had, by this time, blocked the filter. I rushed back into the room just in time to see the growing embolism in the pipe as the pressure built up, and the ensuing explosion of water.  Which was actually radioactive.  It went everywhere.

Consequently I spent the rest of the evening mopping and decontaminating the lab. The computer keyboard was more of a lost cause.  My couple of extra hours of work turned into eight hours of clearing up and trying to put things right

Is there a moral to this story? Not really, I thought it would just amuse you all. If I had had my time again I would still have run that experiment, but the outcome does make a case for the rules we now have in place that outlaw lone working in the lab.  I guess my point is, we all learn and grow from our experiences and mistakes and that for many acacemics begins in those heady postgraduate years.