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Chris Platt
Job title and description
I am a Senior Scientist at a biotechnology company. I specialise in the development of drugs to treat skin wounds and reduce
scarring.
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What qualifications do you have?
I obtained my BSc in Zoology from the University of Nottingham, and my PhD in Cell Biology from the University of East Anglia
(UEA).
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What are your main duties of work?
Wound healing in humans is such a complex event, so it is often necessary to break it down into several overlapping processes.
Part of my role is to use isolated skin cells to mimic wound healing in the lab (in vitro). This involves growing (culturing)
the cells before adding drugs that may be beneficial in wound healing. The next stage is to analyse the data from the experiment
to determine whether the drug has potential as a treatment for wound healing.
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What are your favourite aspects of the job?
This job allows me the freedom to design and carry out experiments related to wound healing. I find this very exciting, particularly
when an experiment I have been working on for weeks gives a positive result! There are also opportunities to travel abroad
to attend wound healing conferences.
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What kind of salary can a graduate expect to earn in this job?
Between £20,000 to £25,000 per year.
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How has your degree helped you?
My degree gave me the basic skills required for laboratory work and scientific report writing. In addition to this, my third
year undergraduate project gave me some insight into designing experiments, even if they didn't always work.
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What made you choose science as a career pathway?
At school I had a really great biology teacher who got me interested in the subject. It was then that I decided I wanted to
study for a career in biology, however at the time I wanted to be an animal behaviour expert. It was only during my degree
that I became interested in cell biology and followed that as my career path.
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