Profile
Richard Fitzpatrick
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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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My pronouns are:
He/him
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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 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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Read more
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Work History:
2013 – 15 Research Assistant
2014 – date University Teaching
2021 – 24 Curriculum Developer
2022 – 24 Postdoc in Bioinformatics Education
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Current Job:
Academic Support Officer (Biotechnology)
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Employer:
The University of Edinburgh (although my work is used mostly at Gujarat Biotechnology University)
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My Interview
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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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