Profile – Green Zone

Favourite thing to do in science: Answer interesting questions!
About Me: I'm a PhD student in University College Cork and a typical mad scientist!
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I live in Ireland with my family. I’m halfway through my PhD to get my doctorate (Dr.). I’m a huge Game of Thrones fan too!
My Work: I'm a scientist very interested in how stress affects the gut and the brain and Im looking at the millions of bugs that live inside and on us and how they help the brain and gut work.
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I’m working on how stress when you’re young can affect how you feel and behave when you’re older. I’m also looking at how your gut and your brain talk to each other and what happens when they don’t communicate properly and things start going wrong and looking at ways to fix that.
My Typical Day: I get up in the morning, go into the lab, and run experiments. I spend the day looking at different things about the gut and the brain. I also get to use a microscope that's as big as a room!
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I do research on the computer about what I’m interested in. This gives me ideas to make more experiments to answer difficult questions like how stress affects the brain and the gut. After the experiments, I get to see what I’ve done looks like under a huge microscope to see if my experiment worked!

James Collins