• Question: Do you think your near the end of your research? :)

    Asked by macncheese to Ivan, James, Jessica, Nicola, Sarah on 18 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Sarah Tesh

      Sarah Tesh answered on 18 Nov 2013:

      Definitely not. It’s still early on in my work and I have a lot of experiments and tests still to do. Even when my PhD is over the research will have to continue because you have to be extremely thorough in testing drinking water filters as it affects human health. The work I’m doing at the moment is only the beginning.

    • Photo: Nicola Potts

      Nicola Potts answered on 18 Nov 2013:

      In some respects research is never ending, we are developing new instruments which give us better results or collecting new samples or trying new methods.

      For my own personal research, I have to ‘finish’ with what I am doing in a year and half’s time. Then I should have finished and written my work into a thesis so I can get a PhD and move on.

      I think I will still have questions around what I look at now and would like to continue researching something similar after I leave.

      (I also feel that even completing the research I am doing now but one years time feels like the impossible right now, but results have a habit of sneaking up on me!)

    • Photo: Jessica Liley

      Jessica Liley answered on 18 Nov 2013:

      In terms of my own research project, I am nearly finished and now writing up my thesis (the big dissertation of all the results you’ve found during your PhD). By March I should hopefully have a new job 🙂

      But the research into my project is on-going and will need at least a few more years of hard work. We need lots more information on how well these environmentally-friendly chemicals work as a large mixture, but also need to make sure this mixture is totally safe and not going to react to people’s skin, for example.

      Even though my part of the project is over, I’ll definitely want to know what new things are being discovered by the next PhD student!

    • Photo: Ivan Campeotto

      Ivan Campeotto answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      In science there are many branches of research and when you think that your research is nearly finished, your results open up new doors instead and new research projects will start again. This is how science progress occurs.
      For example, when viruses were discovered, more questions were raised such as how they infect us and how they are transmitted from animals to humans or vice versa. More importantly, how can we create vaccines to combat them.

Comments