Profile

Photo:

Izzy Newsham

    • About Me:

      I am a computational biology researcher and I live in Guildford with my partner. In order to keep myself (relatively!) sane, I sing in a choir, go kayaking/canoeing and do boxercise classes.

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      Alongside of the above interests, food is very important to me. I regularly watch YouTube videos about cooking and use this as inspiration to plan out what meals to eat. My partner likes to BBQ (even in the winter!) so we frequently get to enjoy his BBQed food.

    • My pronouns are:

      My pronouns are she/her.

    • My Work:

      My work is about using computers to learn new things about biology. I find existing datasets about humans and use AI to try to make predictions about what goes on inside our bodies!

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      I currently work on data about pregnant people. My project aims to use machine learning (think AI) to predict whether a pregnant person will have a problem during pregnancy. So the aim is to use this as a sort of warning system – if it predicts that someone will have a problem, the doctors can look into it and potentially prevent any issues. Hopefully it will be used by doctors in the future, but currently we are still making and testing the system (as it is very important that it works before giving it to any doctors to use!).

    • My Typical Day:

      Some days I go into the library, but many days I work from home. I aim to start work between 8 and 9am and get lunch around 12:30pm. I almost always make my own lunch to save money. Then I continue working until dinner time, around 5 or 6pm.

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      Even though all my work is sitting at my computer, the actual content of my work varies a lot. I spend most of my time running analyses and coding. In the mornings I like to work on analysing results and generating figures (charts and diagrams). It always takes much more time than I except to generate a figure! In the mid to late afternoons I will often be preparing for any upcoming meetings that I have the next day.

    • What I'd do with the prize money:

      There are so many amazing scientists on this site – my chances of being voted are slim so I haven’t thought about that!
      As I am at the beginning of my career, I would probably use it to do something which helps me learn how to communicate my research to normal people(!)

    CV

    • Education:

      I went to St Ivo school and Hills Road Sixth Form College. I really enjoyed computer science A level (where I discovered you could literally code anything you could dream of!), so I chose to study computer science at Bristol.

    • Qualifications:

      GCSEs

      A levels (Computer science, Maths, German)
      AS levels (Music and Further Maths)

      MEng Computer Science

    • Work History:

      After getting my Masters degree, I got a job as research assistant at the University of Cambridge to work on cancer detection.

      Despite this job being a computational biology job, I hardly knew any biology (I hadn’t done biology at A level) and so I had to learn the biology on the job. It turned out I really liked applying my computational skills to biology, so I chose to continue this work into my PhD. I did a PhD is at the University of Cambridge and started in 2020 and finished in 2025.

    • Current Job:

      Research associate at University of Cambridge with Professor Paul Kirk. I work with him and a research team in Uganda to research how we can teach computers to predict things about pregnant women living in Uganda.

    • Employer:

      University of Cambridge

    • My Interview

      • How would you describe yourself in 3 words?

        Computational biology researcher

        What did you want to be after you left school?

        Something to do with computer programming

        Were you ever in trouble at school?

        Nope! Once my whole class got a detention and I was very sad that I was in a detention.

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

        Some kind of programming job, or potentially a kayaking/canoeing instructor.

        Who is your favourite singer or band?

        I listen to a wide variety of music so I couldn't pick one. One of my favourite genres is Disney music.

        What's your favourite food?

        Again, I couldn't pick one! Some favourites include dumplings, rice and dark chocolate.

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

        The ability to teleport, a kitchen island and my thesis to be finished

        Tell us a joke.

        What's a pirate's favourite programming language? R!

Questions answered by Izzy

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