10692 A4 Broadcast Newsletter_aw

MDC Broadcast July Newsletter

When Peter’s son Aidan came to spend a week with us, as part of his work experience, we thought we’d take the opportunity to get to know our Chief Scientific Officer a little better. Here’s what happened when Simpson sat down with Simpson, armed with some very carefully crafted questions for his father. KEEPINGIT INTHE FAMILY

What were your favourite subjects at school? The thing I always say that’s a bit weird is that I nearly didn’t do science because it took me a long time to fall in love with biology. I always liked English and I still like the communication aspects of science. But yes, I guess science in truth, but as I say I fell in love with biology slowly. But not PE and definitely not playing the recorder. What is your Hogwarts house? I have gone Ravenclaw in more recent times if I’m honest which I think is a safe and solid uncontroversial choice because Slytherin is too far. Ravenclaw is kind of cool but it’s not the coolest in the class. I think it’s just slightly edgy you know?! What book/movie/TV show have you read/watched recently that you would recommend? Well, I kind of want to sound a bit more intellectually challenging than just saying Avengers, even though that is the movie I last watched. This year Eighth Grade, and Bookemart, were good, interesting indie movies which I thought were worth watching which were a bit more challenging than the usual superhero ‘things that blow up’ movies. I guess in terms of books I would have to check my phone on what I last read but I recommend to everyone ‘Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’ because I think it is an inspiring, positive book that makes you feel better about life at the end of it. I am currently watching Jessica Jones because things blow up, and its Marvel. I’m reverting to type a little on that last bit. What advice would you give to your younger self? I suppose it would have to be: go for it, you never know what’s the worst that could happen. I guess what I sometimes look back on, and see in your younger self, is the opportunities that you missed. You hardly ever regret the things whereby you tried and failed because then you know. The analogy I always use is that nobody I know has ever regretted moving on from a job, or see that as a mistake, because you make a positive choice to do the next thing, rather than having someone make things happen to you. You’re in control of your destiny. You choose the next step. You choose your path. I think I would encourage my younger self, or you, to make bold choices and try things. Missing opportunities is what you regret. Making mistakes is always the least of your problems.

Teabreak withMalcolm

If you could invite three people, living or dead, to a dinner party who would they be? Donald Trump, Theresa May, Vladimir Putin - to see if they are truly as bad as we all think. If you were stranded on a desert island, what three items would you want to have with you? A lifetime supply of traditional lemon bonbons, my 1974 Citroen DS, and a Matchbox Cascade game (with batteries) If you were to create a slogan for your life, what would the slogan be? Let’s try that again!

What do you enjoy about your job? I always enjoy building things from scratch. One of the exciting things about joining MDC was that there was nothing much here when I joined. There were maybe 7 or so people in the basement and we had to make this into a world-class centre of excellence that impacts on UK drug discovery, from a standing start. I love that. I love the progress as we turn this strategy into reality. It is a privilege to design a department and a strategy on literally a piece of paper, in our computer room, then find the right people, and build the labs, and now it’s a company. People outside MDC now don’t see what it once was, but rather they see it as an impactful thing that always made sense to exist. I like envisioning a strategy, putting it into practice and I guess the third part is that the work I do helps people. When I used to work in Pharma, and I was in a certain type of mood, people asked me what I did for a living at a party and I used to say “I try and cure cancer; what do you do.” Underlying my (slightly passive-aggressive) tone there, is not just that I don’t really like parties, but also the sense that what we do that matters. We help people get newmedicines, so they don’t die, they live to see their granddaughter’s wedding, or to make up with their loved ones, because they live longer, and they live better. Having a job whereby you help people, even if curing people in a hospital is some steps removed from what we do, is a great privilege. The long-term consequences of what we do are that people are alive, that wouldn’t otherwise be alive.

Why did you go into science? When I was a teenager, we had a close family friend who got a serious illness - Huntington’s Disease - and I think that pushed me towards medical research. But I was never really interested in being a Doctor because the thought of prescribing pills that someone else had invented felt quite boring. However, the thought of discovering the pill - doing something that was scientifically interesting but at the same time helping As a family, we do a range of different things. We go to various theatre and musicals and make mosaics - things that are quite different from science and my job. Which three people in fiction or non- fiction, alive or dead would you want to be friends with? It would be cool if they were interesting and diverse, so David Attenborough to start with - wouldn’t everyone think he is cool to hang out with. On a similar note, Brian Cox would be interesting company. Then I guess the person who wrote Hamilton: Lin Manuel Miranda. That would be a good group to hang out with! If you weren’t working in science, what job would you be doing? I started off thinking about writing and I am still interested at some point in my life to stop and write a book, whether that’s a people - felt motivating to me. What is your favourite hobby?

novel or something more factual. It would be interesting to have the space and lack of financial pressure to stop and try doing that. That would be a fun thing to do. What are the most exciting developments in science right now for you? One of the things we are doing here is working out how to do drug discovery better. There are a lot of opportunities to test drugs in ways that we couldn’t do before. Technologies like CRISPR will make it possible for us to test drugs on the actual disease in a human cell to better predict whether it is going to work on an animal or a human. The capability to do relevant drug discovery in a dish that will be increasingly more like the human will be a big breakthrough for us. A completely different science thing with a Cheshire spin is the Square Kilometre Array - world-class science and data management that spans the globe. The centre of the Square Kilometre Array is in Cheshire, but the telescopes are going to be in the southern hemisphere across South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. They all must be synchronised within milliseconds for the data to be useful and then analysed. It is extraordinarily complex science that we all think is just a big telescope, but how do you get the data from three different countries to Cheshire, fully synchronised and then analysable. I like those big science problems thatmean youmust invent new solutions to them.

Tells us your favourite joke I was walking down the road the other day. Suddenly a man appeared. He threw some eggs at me. Then he threw some cheese at me. Finally, he threw two pints of milk at me.

I thought - How Dare He! (Hint: say this is out loud)

Overheard in the office Quote of the month: “I don’t have any colourful clothes, I’m colourful on the inside.” Anonymous.

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