Interested in a career in science? Bryony shares her advice!
There are so many more jobs in science than you can probably imagine. If you know you’d like a career in the sciences but haven’t quite worked out where you’d see yourself fitting in career-wise, that’s ok! Be curious; grab any work experience you can get, go to career fairs and conferences, look around on LinkedIn, reach out and ask people questions about how they ended up in the jobs they have and whether they have internships or graduate schemes open. It will all help you find something that really fits you.
Have you always wanted to work in toxicology?
“No! Like lots of people, my career path was something I stumbled on rather than something I grew up wanting to do. At school, I wanted to be a vet. When it came to university application time, I added some biology courses after realising in a panic I wasn’t 100% sure on that career choice. For my undergraduate I studied biology with honours in physiology, with part of my final year spent in the Netherlands studying neurophysiology through the Erasmus Programme.
“After that, I spent a year in an office job as I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I then joined the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) as a research scientist. The institute specialises in occupational medicine, and I thought the job would help me work out what I wanted to focus on. There, I started to work on the health and safety of nanotechnologies (something I’d never heard of before then) and through this ended up doing a toxicology MSc in Surrey whilst working full time. Afterwards, the opportunity to do a PhD in nanotoxicology at Edinburgh Napier came along through European Commission funding on which IOM and Edinburgh Napier University were partnered. It extended the work I’d done for my MSc thesis, so I jumped at the chance.
“The PhD’s big goal was to build an Integrated Approach to Testing and Assessment (IATA) for assessing the toxicity of engineered nanomaterials to the male reproductive system. This is important because fertility rates (especially in the Western world) are going down, the percentage of chemicals that have been tested for reproductive toxicity is still relatively low, the way we assess substances on the nanoscale has to be different because they often behave differently to larger substances, and ultimately because it’s still very hard to test for this kind of toxicity without relying on lots of animal studies. Creating an IATA that used a mix of reliable, nano-suitable, non-animal methods as a first line of approach would allow for faster screening for potential toxicants and ultimately help to reduce the burden of regulatory animal testing for reproductive toxicology, as these would be targeted toward substances for which the screening phases identified a cause for concern.”
What is your current role?
“After I graduated from ENU, I promised myself a few months off before job hunting, but when I decided to start that process, Covid arrived, and we went into lockdown. So, it was a slower start than planned! Fast forward to summer 2020 and a job advert for a consultant toxicologist in regulatory science with a company called Blue Frog Scientific caught my eye. I reached out to them to ask for more info and soon after had signed a contract. I felt lucky to be taken on by a company that was forward thinking and able to set me up as a home worker easily.
“I started as a Senior Consultant Toxicologist working to help companies navigate the European chemical regulation, REACH. As well as general toxicology, I had speciality focus on developmental and reproductive toxicity & endocrine disruption (DART and ED) as there aren’t many people with that skillset in regulatory science and it’s an area that’s getting increasing attention from regulators. Over the following couple of years, I worked across hundreds of projects, multiple regulations and areas of toxicology – its fast paced and I’m never bored!
“Last year I had the opportunity to progress to Principal Consultant & took on management of the company’s Human Safety Team. I now have a dual role looking after a ‘virtual team’ of toxicologists and risk assessors working across the UK and France, as well as being a technical expert. The majority of the consulting I do now is either specialist (on DART/ED), or on advocacy-based projects, which is really cool as the problems are always complex and you’re often navigating on a fine line between science and law. Plus, I get to work in a multi-disciplinary, multinational company with colleagues, clients and partners from all over the world which I really love.”
Away from work, what do you do in your free time?
“I’m so curious about the world and I want to experience anything and everything - I love music, travel, exercise, cooking, reading, films! A big theme is anything that’s active, so I spend a lot of spare time horse riding, hiking or at the gym. Since 2014 I’ve had a secondary ‘job’ with a company called Les Mills International, who are a real giant in the group exercise world, helping to train instructors, build and deliver education and showcase their programmes.
“I put job in inverted commas because it really doesn’t feel like one. It’s about helping people be healthy and feel better, which aligns with why I work in toxicology, and with the buzz that comes with it, I really can’t call it work! My current employer is really supportive of my involvement with this, as was Edinburgh Napier University – it paid my bills through the final years of the PhD and helps to keep a good work-life balance in the job I’m in now.”