Hi, I’m Judit, I’m a technician and the head of the Cell Nursery we have in Belfast. My job is to welcome and take care of all the cells and samples we get from the lovely research nurses in Belfast and Scotland. I have an incubator where I keep the cells in little flasks, and do my very best to make them happy so they grow. When I say grow what I really mean is that they multiply and soon there are so many in a flask, they need a bigger home! And soon after that they need even more space! When they fill up 3 flasks, I freeze them in little tubes, and keep them in a really cold container with liquid nitrogen in it. It is like hibernation for bears. They can be kept in this state for very long and woken up whenever they are needed for experiments. I also help with the experiments, which I really like, I can learn new things every day while I support my colleagues’ work.
I absolutely love working with these cells, and on this project. I hope that one day – with your help – we can figure out why little kids are wheezy and how asthma develops. I have a wheezy little boy at home, so I’m excited to work on this project with the other scientist in our lab.
This is the sign on the incubator I raise the cells in:
And here is a picture of the incubator, where the cells spend most of their time before they are sent to hibernation:
