What university experiences have influenced them wanting to become scientists?

I did a lot of work outside of the lecture domain, … writing my own notes… and structuring them, so I could understand it.

I worked in a group that was very collaborative [as a PhD student]. There were lots of people in the group and lots of experiences… people who’d worked in science for quite a while and then lots of new people as well all… mixing together. So a lot of the… ‘day to day’ of that was that sort of discussion, and coming up with ideas on your own, and then bringing it to everyone else, and then having that… feedback from everyone else… I think there was a lot of synthesis of ideas.

I was treated more like a fellow [when doing a PhD], so being able to do my own research rather than them telling me what to do.

…we always were allowed to hand it [homework] in groups. So, you sit together with your friends and you try to work out the solutions to the problems, and then a group of two or three could hand in a single solution. So, that already teaches you to collaborate.

…I could do my final year research project in the US... The way research is done in countries like the UK and the US, which is… here is a question just go and run with it… So this kind of freedom attracted me… I’m quite good at doing some research work and seeing what I do in the context of what other people have done and describe a story… This is where it then came together. Then I decided to do a PhD because I thought, “Okay, now I need to explore this a bit more.”