Meet the scientists: The journey of three young people into a Covid testing lab

BBC Bitesize

Over the past year, many things we might never before have given a second thought, have now become hugely important parts of our everyday lives.

Making sure we've got a mask and hand sanitiser with us before leaving the house is almost second nature. Phrases like social distancing and hybrid working roll off the tongue multiple times a day. And tests and vaccines not heard of before 2020 are now crucial in the fight against the pandemic.

Some incredible people work really hard to get our Covid tests sorted – we've spoken to some of them

Behind the scenes, there are amazing people making all of these things possible. We’ve chatted to three young scientists at the Alderley Park Lighthouse Lab in Manchester - when you get a test, this is one of the places it gets sent to to see if it's positive or negative. We spoke to them about how they got there, and what advice they have for young people looking to follow similar careers.

Alex, 24

Alex has loved science since he was very little. So, after leaving Eritrea and coming the UK as a refugee in 2012, he followed his dream and worked towards a place on a Biomedical Science degree at Manchester Metropolitan University. His course offered the opportunity to do an industrial placement in his third year and, when the pandemic struck, he decided to take it and started working at the testing lab.

His role is critical in the fight against Covid-19: “Currently, I'm on the PCR analysis station… once we can see what the positives and negatives are, we do a mini-analysis before we send it to the final station, and then it gets sent to the NHS.”

“Lockdown was quite an intense period”, Alex explains, but he believes it was entirely worth it: “You feel like you’re contributing to a massive national effort and I’m proud to be a part of that.”

While Alex has had other jobs before starting his placement year, he says the lab “is a massive step up”, with a “completely different environment and set of responsibilities.”

But that doesn’t faze him in the slightest: “That’s the brilliant part of it as well, because you get to undertake new challenges on a daily basis.”

Alex says while his route into the lab wasn’t a standard one, he hopes it can serve as inspiration for others who want to tread a similar path: “I understand there are certain challenges, and a career in STEM could seem quite overwhelming sometimes, but my advice is simply, if I can do it, everyone else can do it. Just follow what you're passionate about, and always just believe it's achievable.”

Koye, 22

Koye’s route into the lab was also unorthodox, but for different reasons. While he’s had an interest in science from a young age (with a personal letter from David Attenborough he treasures serving as proof), he subsequently developed a love of languages that led him to do a degree in French and Business Management. From September 2021, he is going to be a French teacher, as he's also now completed his teacher training course.

After graduating in 2020, he planned to take a gap year, but Covid-19 obviously scuppered those plans. So, while on the hunt for a job, he decided that his criteria would be something where he’d be “making a difference every day”, which is how he ended up applying for a job in the testing lab.

He started off in the unboxing room where tests get delivered, then, at the end of 2020, he underwent training to become a level 2 scientist. This means he’s now part of a team that helps to track the positive test results. They can then be analysed and track variants that are in circulation around the country.

He says that while he loves all the training he’s received, his favourite part of the job is definitely the people he gets to work with every day: “I’ve met a lot of amazing people. Some of the smartest people I’ve ever met as well.”

While his route into the lab might not be what you’d expect, he says that his advice to young people looking at careers in science is they should apply for anything and everything that they think they’d be great at, no matter their background. As he puts it: “I guess I'm a living breathing example of what you can achieve, when you step outside your comfort zone.”

Dona, 24

Some though, like Dona, have taken a more traditional route to the lab, although there’s been plenty of self-discovery along the way for her, too.

“From a really young age, I've been really fascinated by how things work,” she explains, adding she has been drawn to different scientific fields at different times. As she got older, she discovered a love of technology, so after doing a Biomedical Science undergraduate degree, she combined her passions and started a Biomedical Engineering master's.

Dona was studying for her master's degree when the pandemic struck. She said she did a lot of home learning like most others did, and essentially set up her own lab in her house, where she practised data analysis, robotics and coding. She eventually came to realise coding was something she loved, and learning how to do it through her degree was “something of a turning point”. It was from that moment on that she realised she wanted to be a data scientist, and so she applied to work at Lighthouse Labs.

But that wasn't the only reason: “I'm a person that wants to use what I can in my education to do something towards making hopefully a better outcome in the world. So I really wanted to help with Covid,” she says.

She joined at first as a scientist doing PCR testing, but, when a job as a data scientist came up, she leapt at the opportunity.

She’s surprised herself at how well she’s been able to adapt to the world of work: “When I was at uni, I was quite shy… one thing I used to hate was public speaking. I'm terrified of speaking to an audience, and working here, I've had to just put my big girl pants on and embrace my fears.”

She now does big presentations to senior colleagues about trends in data, and trains up more junior members of staff – something she never thought she’d be able to do. Her advice is to not believe the misconception that to be a scientist, “you need to be academic”. Whilst academic knowledge is useful, there's lots more than you can bring to the table. Dona says she's found “there's a lot of creativity in STEM careers.”

Above all, if you think that you didn’t get the right grades or you’ve realised you want to be a scientist at a different time to other people, she wants to reassure you that “it’s never too late”.

Full article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zkpbvwx