Profile
Fraser Smith
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About Me:
I live in Norwich. I’m a teacher and researcher during the day. In the evening I love to play guitar, read books and hang out with my wife and son.
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I also love to play sport (basketball, football and running). I spend a lot of my time off work taking my son to play football.
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My pronouns are:
he/him
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My Work:
I use brain scanners and AI to find out how our brain works. I look at how our brain helps us recognize what’s in the world around us (people, places, objects).
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You can see brain scanners in most hospitals these days, but I use them to see how the brain works. We get students to lie still and watch pictures or movies we show them. Then we use AI to find out how our brain let’s us know what’s out there in the world.
Me with a couple of students with a brain scanner in the background (we were in the Netherlands here)
one of the best bits of the job: me with one of my former students on graduation day – we get to dress up in harry potter like mode
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My Typical Day:
I wake up around 7.30 and have breakfast (cereal and coffee). I drop my son at school then cycle into work. Some days I teach students about how our brain works and the cool kit we can use to look inside a living brain and see what its up to. Other days I do lots of experiments and look at the numbers. I go home around 4pm.
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On same days I take my students to the brain scanner and we hook up a new experiment. We then try it out on a test person to see if it works. Other days I do lots of coding to tell the computer how to figure out if the experiment works. I love solving a problem with coding and seeing it work.
Sometimes we get to go to big science meetings (conferences) where we meet other scientists. We all present our work and talk about what we learned from our experiments. We also get to hangout with friends and colleagues from previous places that we’ve worked. Sometimes there is a dance night!
sunset in St Pete Beach Florida where the biggest science meeting is in my field each year!
me giving a talk at Norwich Science Festival about my research
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I would use the prize money to facilitate trips from local schools in under-served parts of Norwich so they can visit the UEA campus – and visit our brain scanning machines and learn about our research.
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Education:
I grew up in Prestwick, Scotland and went to Prestwick Academy. I sometimes got in trouble at school and wasn’t super interested in studying until I had an amazing English teacher in Y5. We studied an awesome book called The Inheritors – about another race of humans who lived before we did (Neanderthals). This made me super curious about how humans have changed over time. I also loved learning about human biology.
I went to Glasgow Uni and studied Biology and Psychology for a couple of years before deciding to specialize in Psychology (I really loved Biology and Neuroscience but didn’t want to cut up brains!) I did also apply to study AI in Edinburgh but decided to stick with Psychology.
After this I went to Stirling Uni and did a PhD in Psychology. This took 3 more years and I got to learn a lot about how our brains work (I studied our amazing ability to recognize people through their face).
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Qualifications:
In Scotland I studied for standard grades and then for highers.
I got Higher Biology, English, History and Computing. I wasn’t great at the problem solving parts of maths so I did Maths Higher over 2 years.
I got my undergrad degree in Psychology from Glasgow Uni and my PhD from Stirling.
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Work History:
I worked as a researcher in Glasgow for a few years – where I learned how to use brain scanners and AI to figure out how the brain works.
I also went to Canada (London – a few hours from Toronto) to be a researcher for 2 years with my girlfriend (who is now my wife, she’s also a scientist and is from Portugal). Science can be cool for allowing you to travel and work in other places for a while and also to meet people from all over the world.
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Current Job:
In my current job I spent about half my time teaching students – helping them learn about how the brain works, and how we can study the brain. The rest of the time I do experiments and do coding so AI can figure out what’s happening in the brain.
Coding let’s me tell the computer what to do – I need to do this to get the AI to figure out what was going on the in the brain while people watched a movie.
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Employer:
I work at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. There is a lovely green campus and an awesome art museum we can go to.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
music loving neuroscientist
What did you want to be after you left school?
I wanted to work at university - I thought figuring out how things work would be a cool job to do.
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Sometimes - though near the end of school I had an amazing English teacher who really inspired me
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
school teacher or maybe a book writer
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Pearl Jam (90s rock band) I've seen them 10 times.
What's your favourite food?
I love a good steak pie
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
to be braver when I'm in a group, to build my courage to play guitar on stage
Tell us a joke.
How does a brain say hello? With a brain wave!
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