Sonia - Laboratory Technician
Name:
Sonia
Education:
Laboratory Technician
Job title:
Laboratory Technician
Department:
Protein Expression
“I have dreamed about doing research ever since I was a child. And I have always wanted to work with genes. They fascinate me. We know the genes are there, but we can’t see them. For people without biochemical background, the whole thing may seem impossible and difficult – it may be hard to believe, that a reaction is taking place in the tiny plastic tube with a colourless drop inside…. I think it is quite amazing!
A little like working in the dark
“When I go home in the afternoon after having started an experiment, I don’t know what I’ll find the next day. Whether I will have moved a step further in my project – or will have been set back a month. Research is a little like working in the dark. You don’t always know where you are. You have to find your way, and suddenly you get results. That’s what makes it so exciting to work with projects at the research stage. We’re working with a whole new world and we learn something every day.
I work closely together with a scientist and discuss my experiments with him, but my work is independent in the sense that I decide by myself how to run our experiments. My specific results are usually part of a larger project – so in that way I am also part of a larger project group. I like the feeling of being surrounded by capable scientists.
Learning from mistakes
“You have to be curious to do research – and you have to be patient. Some days are better than others, and we can’t always explain why. Naturally we use theory as a basis, but things don’t always work the way they should in accordance to theory. And genes happen to “behave” differently: what works for one gene in one experiment may not work for another gene. And the cells can also have a bad day, just like the rest of us.
When you’re doing research, you get useful information, even from procedures, you might call wrong. And in fact, sometimes you can learn a lot from making a mistake. Naturally our work is very goal-oriented, but I once designed an experiment, which was supposedly wrong, as I found out later. In spite of that, it ended up giving us the information we needed to move ahead.”