My direction of research changes to look at the brain...

When I got to the end of my PhD I was left in a bit of a quandary.

I had good results and a professor at Glasgow vet school had talked to me about my potential success in the vet school, now I had made such a good impression so far. But the calling of that book by Redfield Jamison was too strong for me. I wanted to work on a subject I was truly passionate about…

…I landed myself a postdoc position researching schizophrenia in PsyRING. This was a group funded by a Japanese company Mitsubishi Pharma, with Glasgow University and University of Strathclyde.

My initial project was to look at gene changes in our model of the disease, followed by the effects of an antipsychotic.

Now that I look back, it makes me think about what could be made of that idea. If a genetic pattern were found for schizophrenia, it could be used to investigate what the cause of the disease is which as yet is unknown.

In fact, if it wasn’t for the intellectual property restrictions from Mitsubishi Pharma, I could use my data to investigate this myself with collaborators.

These creative ideas are what I think about longingly now that my research career has ended.