I went to  college after finishing high school and studied Biology, Performance arts, Psychology and English literature.

I decided that I wanted to go to university to do Genetics and managed to get a place in the University of Liverpool in the UK, but before my course began I decided to take a gap year to travel around Australia and Asia.

Whilst in Australia in Cairns I learnt to scuba dive and fell in love with the ocean and decided that I wanted to spend my life trying to protect the ocean and the planet from man-made destruction such as pollution, over-fishing and climate change. So I decided to change my course from Genetics to Marine Biology.

So off I went to uni and did 3 years Marine biology, because I still liked genetics I decided to choose some genetics modules as part of my course so I could major in Marine biology and minor in genetics. Whilst doing marine biology I got to do research in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Cyprus studying marine animals and their habitats.

Whilst at uni I decided that I liked doing my own research so told myself that I would one day do a PhD and become a scientist. To do a PhD first you have to do a masters, so after university I went to Wales to do a masters in Marine environmental protection. For my masters dissertation I got to go to Africa for two months (for free!) to do my research on mangrove swamps.

After that I was offered a PhD at the University of Adelaide. Which is what I am in the middle of doing now!

At the moment my research involves using genetics (sequencing DNA) as a way to find out what animals are present in freshwater rivers, lakes and streams. I am also doing research for SA Water to find out what tiny animals are lurking in drinking water! This is to make sure that all our drinking water is clean and safe to drink.

So to sum me up in a sentence: I love scuba diving, I love animals, I love learning new things about the world we live in (Biology) and I love traveling. Doing science is the best job in the world because it means I get to do the things I love (and get paid for it!) and I’m working on protecting the things I love.

Living in a wealthy country we don’t realise how lucky we are to have access to a good education. There are millions of children in the world who don’t get a good enough education and many that don’t even get the opportunity to go to school. They are never able to get a good job as a result and can’t earn enough money to pull themselves out of poverty. $1000 in a 3rd world country such as Africa or India could buy A LOT of text books and perhaps even a TV to show educational videos. I think they need the money more than us.