• Question: What is the most exciting thing about being a scientist

    Asked by Harrysimp710 to Anna, George, Jodi, Rob, Stefan on 10 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Anna Scaife

      Anna Scaife answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      Perhaps the most exciting thing is when you realise you’re seeing something no-one has ever seen before, or you’ve answered a question that no-one else has answered (or maybe even asked). That’s a pretty cool feeling.

      Some of the other nice things are probably: (1) Getting to travel a lot – science is very collaborative and you have to go to a lot of different places. I’ve seen more of the world than almost anyone I know (except maybe other astronomers 🙂 ). (2) Meeting interesting people who are really enthusiastic about what they do. I love that.

    • Photo: Jodi Schneider

      Jodi Schneider answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      I’m working on new problems, that we don’t know the answers to. If I’m successful, my work will help computers & people work together better on making decisions based on HUGE amounts of info. I love doing something that’s fun and that helps people.

    • Photo: Stefan Lines

      Stefan Lines answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      I think the most exciting thing is making a discovery that no one has made before. I also agree with Anna that being a Scientist means getting to travel to awesome places and meeting different and interesting people.

    • Photo: Rob Appleyard

      Rob Appleyard answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Building a nifty system to solve a problem in an interesting way.

      The travel’s pretty nice too. Last conference: Taiwan, where I talked about a new system for storing large amounts of data safely. Next conference: San Diego, California, where I’ll be learning about a particular way of moving data around the grid which doesn’t get disrupted by bad connections.

    • Photo: George Ryall

      George Ryall answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      We’re working on the edge of what is known on problems no one knows the answerers to, that’s exciting to me. In my everyday work I work in a team that take new computing technologies and push them to the edge of what they were designed for. If I were working in industry, I’d be looking to use tried and tested technology in ways many people have used them before.

      The travel to go and meet other people doing similar work is pretty good to. I’ve been to Madrid, Berlin, Geneva and Manchester for conferences since I started work here a couple of years ago.

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