• Question: have you made a revolutionary break through?

    Asked by anon-214607 to Helen, Farah, Dave, Cheryl, Bastian, Alun on 11 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Cheryl Williams

      Cheryl Williams answered on 11 Jun 2019:

      My job doesn’t really allow me to make revolutionary breakthroughs, as I work in the NHS and not in research. However, I have been involved in diagnosing difficult diseases. Sometimes patients can be ill for some time and no-one can really get to the bottom of what is wrong with them. I have helped to find out which germ has caused an infection in a patient where nobody else could find out what was wrong with them. Although this isn’t a revolutionary breakthrough on a large scale, this was a breakthrough in terms of helping the patient to get better.

    • Photo: Dave Underhill

      Dave Underhill answered on 11 Jun 2019:

      I wouldn’t say a revolutionary breakthrough but anyone who has a PhD has added significantly to their discipline. I have discovered things no one knew before and have realised things no one had realised before. I was able to prove that what was believed to be the first tool industry used by Homo sapiens in southern Africa was actually the result of two different industries being mixed by geological processes. I was also part of a team that has been able to show that Neanderthals didn’t drive large animals off cliffs as previously thought but were much better at driving animals up gorges to kill spots. Both of these have changed textbooks. I have also been the first to apply new techniques to the study of artefacts, techniques that are now widely used, even developing some new techniques and methods myself.

    • Photo: Farah Elahi

      Farah Elahi answered on 11 Jun 2019:

      I wouldn’t go as far as saying I’ve made a revolutionary break through. In my opinion, research which leads to a revolutionary break through, are projects which have a big budget (maybe millions of pounds worth of money). They have the resources and large teams (possibly internationally) to conduct huge research projects. However as a PhD student, you’re on your own conducting the research and don’t have a big budget! Virtual reality therapy treatments are still in their infancy – so one of my studies found that we can use virtual reality equipment to provide therapy, which can lead to social functioning improvements in young people with psychosis. This is quite a specific and unique finding and I believe this is one of the first research studies to do this. This can influence future researchers (or so I hope) in this field to carry out similar research, so we can learn more about this.

    • Photo: Alun Owen

      Alun Owen answered on 12 Jun 2019:

      Sadly not as I don’t do a great deal of research but hopefully one of my students will have one 😀

    • Photo: Bastian Saputra

      Bastian Saputra answered on 12 Jun 2019:

      I haven’t made any breakthrough so far. But hopefully will make it someday in future if i work hard on my research.

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