• Question: How will your research benefit me?

    Asked by anon-176756 to Ali, Jenny, Mark, Paul, Simran, Stephen on 18 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Mark Kirkwood

      Mark Kirkwood answered on 18 Jun 2018:

      Oooh, how cold 😛

      It’s a good question though, because funding bodies (the guys with the cash), always want to know what the IMPACT of your work is, and how it benefits society.

      My research hopes to benefit people who might get food poisoning, by helping us work out how to stop so much food being contaminated by food pathogens in the first place.

    • Photo: Ali Hill

      Ali Hill answered on 18 Jun 2018:

      Good question. Maybe it won’t!

      I guess it depends if you like watching or playing sports. I want to know what foods can make us better at sports. Think about the 100m Olympic finals- there was about half a second between 1st and last place. That’s 2%. We’re always looking for what we call marginal gains in sports- what changes can we make to get that 2% more. That’s why the British cycling teams take their own pillows when they’re racing because researchers have found that makes you go faster because you’ve slept better. More here – https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/19174302

      And that’s the kind of thing I research- what can make you run faster, kick further, cycle harder etc. Sport is a fantastic thing for getting a community together – you only have to look at the flags out at the moment and all the talk about the World Cup to see that. Or think about the footie matches that were played on the front line in World War II (http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zxsfyrd). So I’d like to think that even if my research doesn’t end up affecting you directly if you don’t become a professional athletes, or ever take up any sport, you’ll still be affected by it because of the atmosphere of the world cup or Olympics or Paralympics or any other major sporting event, and my contribution to our scientific understanding of sports.

    • Photo: Paul Newell Price

      Paul Newell Price answered on 22 Jun 2018:

      It will help make sure that we have enough food to eat in the future, that the food is produced in an environmentally friendly way, that agricultural landscapes look how we want them to look and that the birds and animals we like to see in the countryside have all the food and habitats that they need.

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