• Question: what made you wan't to do your job

    Asked by claraoldfield to Anna, Craig, Richard, Shane, Sue on 21 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by katieholly, misssandra, 10msphi.
    • Photo: Anna Williams

      Anna Williams answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Hi Clara,
      When I was about 7, my dad gave me a book about forensic science, and being a detective, and ever since then, I knew I wanted to work for the police or be a forensic scientist. After I did my undergraduate degree in archaeology and anthropology, I went on a week long short course about forensic anthropology, which I hadn’t heard of by then. I knew immediately that this is what I wanted to do – I could use my anthropological and osteological (bone) knowledge to solve crimes and identify unknown bodies, and I would get to go to crime scenes and work with the police.

    • Photo: Shane Pennington-Cooper

      Shane Pennington-Cooper answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Hello Clara,

      I think the reason why I chose to do my job was because I wanted to help students, given my love for forensic science and teaching I wanted to blend these passions together so students have a better chance of understanding the fundamentals of forensic science. Ever since I was young I would always analyse things and always had a very strong passion for science, I used to have science kits and a microscope and would always research anything I did not understand, I think this impulse to research has followed me through to now. If I can help at least one student pass when they thought they would fail then I feel that I have done something positive. I think the biggest achievement in this job was to turn a student who struggled with her work due to having dyslexia into a confident well rounded intelligent individual who is now in her third year writing a very detailed dissertation as we speak.

    • Photo: Craig McKenzie

      Craig McKenzie answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Hi Clara!
      I just realised that for some reason I missed answering your question earlier and I am very sorry for that as it is a good one. I’m going to answer your question by starting of with my job as a scientist first then as a forensic scientist.
      When I was growing up I always lived by the sea and as a teenager I noticed a lot of dead seals washing up on the beach. When I found out a little bit more about what was happening i discovered that they were dying because of a virus – i started work as a volunteer recovering the bodies and recovering the details. This was one of my first experiences of a big scientific project and working with professional scientists. I loved what they were trying to do and how they were trying to solve a problem using science and it got me really interested n that kind of work.

      I was at uni doing a degree in Chemistry at the time and when i graduated (ctually the day of my graduation!) I got offered the chance to study the reasons why the seals had been so affected by the virus at a government research lab in Aberdeen. One of the reasons is that the mixture of pollutants in the seals bodies were affecting the ability of the seals to fight off the effects of the virus (this is called immune suppression). I studied this for six years, got my doctorate (I wasn’t expecting to do that!), travelled the world, met amazing people an learned so many of the scientific techniques I am still using today. That is why and how I became a scientist and couldn’t imagine doing anything else now.

      In my current job, I was working as a forensic scientist, investigating fires and doing chemical analysis for the Scottish Police Services Authority (SPSA) and loved the people i was working with but felt I wanted to do a lot more research and develop new scientific methods as I was too busy working on day to day casework. I was not able to do that with the SPSA and so I decided to move to Aberdeen and now work as a lecturer and researcher at the Robert Gordon University: Here is a link to where I work in the School of Pharmacy and Life Sciences http://www4.rgu.ac.uk/pharmacy_life/courses/page.cfm?pge=66367 and this is the course i teach on: http://www.rgu.ac.uk/sports-biomedical-and-laboratory-sciences/study-options/undergraduate/forensic-science when i’m not doing research. I’m not advertising the course – there are many other very good courses- the web pages just have a little more information about the subjects we study in forensic science and i thought it might be useful.
      I had done some teaching at the police training colleges when with SPSA but i I really enjoy my job now and i still work with many forensic scientists and still do a lot of work with the SPSA but now I get to teach students and professionals (which I love) and do a lot more research, which I am very happy about.

    • Photo: Sue Carney

      Sue Carney answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Clara, this is a good question! I always wanted to work in science. I knew that from a fairly early age and was particularly interested in DNA. I did some research work at university working with DNA, but when I came to the end of that, I wasn’t sure I wanted to carry on working in research. It was a couple of years after that that I saw the Forensic Science Service (FSS) were recruiting forensic scientists and knew immediately that was what I wanted to do! The thought of being able to use the science of DNA to help solve crimes was very exciting, because up until that point, I’d always loved reading crime fiction and watching detective programmes on TV. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it sooner and I wasn’t disappointed.

      The training I had at the FSS was fascinating and pretty intense. After a year of training, including tests and exams that were sometimes demanding, I was let loose on real cases! For the first year or so, I had a mentor to discuss my cases with. Even after that though, I’ve found that I still discuss my cases with my colleagues, as do other colleagues too. We all continue to learn new things and build up more experience of unusual cases. That’s very much part of being a forensic scientist.

    • Photo: Richard Case

      Richard Case answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Hi Clara,

      I was leaving school so decided to work for the police… when the fingerprint job came up, the money and prospects were good, so I went for it.

      Now I know what the job is all about… I am glad I made the decision, and feel privileged to be doing my job.

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