Profile
Holly Hall
My CV
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Education:
- Lode Heath School
- Solihull 6th Form College
- University of Wolverhampton
- University of Warwick
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Qualifications:
- GCSEs –
- A-levels – Economics, Biology, and Chemistry
- Degree – BSc (hons) Pharmacology
- PhD – Medical Sciences
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Work History:
- I started work when I was about 13 working in a hairdressers one night a week after school and on a Saturday morning.
- As soon as I was 18 I started work bartending and waitressing I continued this up to my final year of university. In the holidays around college or university, I worked with several temping agencies, where I filled a variety of roles from a secretary, clerk, to working in a call centre.
- I also spent a summer interning at a recruitment agency between college and my undergraduate degree as I was very much convinced I wouldn’t get any A levels!
- During my PhD I worked as a demonstrator in the undergraduate labs and during my final year as a research assistant
- After my PhD, my first post-doc was at the MRC Toxicology Unit (University of Cambridge)
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About Me:
I’m Holly, a post-doctoral researcher in Glasgow specialising in cancer biology. I used to be in the lab but now I specialise in computational biology.
I love plants, DIY, reading, travel, food and gaming.
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I spent most of my life living around Birmingham, Solihull, Wolverhampton, and Coventry before moving up to Glasgow four years ago with my partner, George.
I brought a flat in the west end of Glasgow, which was in a bit of a state so I spend most of my time trying to fix it. We’re determined to do most of it ourselves and have had great fun learning lots of new skills (tiling, plastering, woodwork etc.). In the evenings you can find me on discord attempting to play games with friends (I’m not very good, so there’s lots of try-harding!) or reading. I oscillate between something terrible and classic literature to keep it interesting.
I have a collection of more than 200 plants, I love to cook and bake on the weekends.
I’m on a mission (with my friends) to travel the world.
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My current project is to look at the many mouse models we have of cancer and see if they’re similar to human cancer.
The data I am currently working with is RNA sequencing – this means that I have a measurement for each of the messages within a cell which gives instructions on how to build everything the cell needs to survive. There are usually 50,000 unique messages in a cell so that’s a lot of information!
I have data from over 10,000 different human tumours, and 10,000 different mouse tumours and I use programming to match the mice to the humans.
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My Typical Day:
Most of my day is writing code, occasionally reading research papers for new ideas or writing my own papers to share my work with other scientists. I am lucky that my work is very flexible, so I can do it from home or the office, and I have no set hours as long as I get everything done!
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I’m not very good in the mornings, so typically I roll out of bed at 8:30. If I’m working from home, I’ll immediately get out my laptop and check my emails and if I have any meetings that day. If I’m in the office I walk in (which is about 20 mins away). I typically take about 30 mins for lunch at midday. The end of the day depends how my brain is doing, sometimes I’m in the zone and will not stop until what I want to do is done, other days I’ll be frazzled and leave at 5pm.
Most of my day is writing code, occasionally reading research papers for new ideas or writing my own papers to share my work with other scientists. I spend some time in meetings to discuss what I’ve been doing or to discuss what someone else wants me to do.
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My Interview
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What did you want to be after you left school?
I had no idea!
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Constantly (I'm sorry Mr Hemming)
What's your favourite food?
Vietnamese, or chocolate cake!
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