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Richard Fitzpatrick

    • About Me:

      I live with my husband in Edinburgh. Most of my work however is in Gujarat in India. I enjoy cooking and video games, and finding new music to listen to (and sing badly to!).

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      I’m originally a neuroscientist specialising in memory. Although I don’t like lab work very much so I decided to re-train and do more computational work. I’ve always loved computers and video games, and I’ve built these hobbies into my career so far.

      I love finding things out and learning, and so all my jobs and research has been about that. This also means my favourite games have interesting stories and lots of information and detail in them.

      I really love music too – I was a student radio presenter for just over 8(!) years. I still enjoy making playlists for people and exploring all sorts of music. It ranges from medieval music to disco to indie to music from all across the world! So do feel free to recommend me things!

    • My pronouns are:

      He/him

    • My Work:

      I work at a brand new Biotechnology university in Gujarat, India. I helped design the curriculum and now train the professors there. I also help them with their teaching.

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      My career is quite strange – neuroscience, to philosophy, to computer modelling and teaching, to biotechnology curriculum design, to teaching bioinformatics in schools, to now.

      Somewhere within all that I’ve been able to make games for teaching and public engagement, mainly using Minecraft.

      I will use this space to say that whilst a lot of my work involves computers and making things using computers, I’m generally rubbish at coding. I can read programming languages pretty well, but when it comes to writing them I tend to get stuck often!

      I quite like the Minecraft coding space because it’s easy to see an actual effect and test things and if I get bored just build something. It definitely works better with how my own brain works.

    • My Typical Day:

      I wake up and have some yoghurt and a coffee about 8:30/9 am. Then I start work (from home) at 9:30 or 10 am depending on how sleepy I am! All of my work is done on the computer. I’m usually writing documents or on calls with my work colleagues. I usually finish up about 6 pm.

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      Sometimes my work is writing or editing documents for professors in India. Sometimes it is helping with teaching at the University of Edinburgh. And sometimes it is playing Minecraft or seeing how my student team is getting on with our lab rat game!

      I tend to like to mix up a lot of what I do in a day else I get bored. I get to visit Gujarat often, and when I am there days are always very busy! When there I do a lot of discussions with students and have meetings to go through teaching material with all the professors there.

    • What I'd do with the prize money:

      I’d invest in a getting a room at home setup for podcasting/broadcasting and start doing more digital public engagment that way! It would be great to go back to doing radio-style chats about science.

    CV

    • Education:

      I earned a scholarship to study at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield. From there in 2009 I came to Edinburgh to study Neuroscience, and fell in love with memory. Both my MSc and my PhD are also about memory, but in very different ways!

      The MSc was meant to be training to be a computational neuroscientist but I was more fascinated with the philosophy of memory. The PhD afterward was all about building large biochemical models of memory, as well as teaching. The models looked at a tiny space in your brain cells called the postsynaptic bouton. I was trying to model all the molecules crammed into this space and how they interacted.

    • Qualifications:

      2007 GCSEs

      • 10 A*

      2009 A-levels

      • Maths, Chemistry, Biology, General Studies –  A
      • Physics (AS) – B

      2013 BSc Biological Sciences (Neuroscience)

      2014 PhD attempt #1 (I quit after 10 weeks)

      2016 MSc Cognitive Science

      2021 PhD Integrative Physiology

    • Work History:

      2013 – 15 Research Assistant

      2014 – date University Teaching

      2021 – 24 Curriculum Developer

      2022 – 24 Postdoc in Bioinformatics Education

    • Current Job:

      Academic Support Officer (Biotechnology)

    • Employer:

      The University of Edinburgh (although my work is used mostly at Gujarat Biotechnology University)

    • My Interview

      • What did you want to be after you left school?

        A neuroscientist

        Were you ever in trouble at school?

        Almost never, I was much too shy!

        If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?

        Radio Presenter/Public Engagement Professional

        Who is your favourite singer or band?

        Band: R.E.M | Singer: Kate Bush

        What's your favourite food?

        Literally any dessert - I have a very sweet tooth!

        If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!

        That I could understand any language | That I can live long enough to understand everything I want to | That I'd always have the right amount of money to buy something

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