Dashboard – AI Zone

About Me:

I am Portuguese, but currently live with my partner in a small town close to Bath! I am a researcher during the day, and attempt to do some stand up comedy at night. My favourite hobbies, as boring as it sounds, are reading, LEGO and boardgames!
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One of my most favourite things in the world is reading – delving into fiction makes my life much more colourful! Other favourites are hiking with my partner, discovering new towns and honestly… just finding new bookshops to explore!

As for the stand up – I do that as a way to deal with the stresses of life. I don’t think there are a lot of things that can’t be made light of 🙂

But I think my friend’s favourite thing about me… is that I stress bake! And I’m always stressed… so you see where this is going!
My pronouns are:

she/her
My Work:

I am a researcher in the field of AI applied to biosciences. Mostly, I work with computer vision, where computational methods are used to analyse images! I also love to do science communication whenever I can.
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The world of bio imaging has such a range of scales that it is astonishing the things we can visualise nowadays! For example – we can take photographs of molecules… using electrons! It’s not a colourful photo as we’re used to, but it we can still analyse them to look at what things actually look like.

I use computational methods (AI amongst them!) to look at these images and try to analyse them beyond what we think is there!

As for the science communication, I’m one of the hosts of the Turing Podcast, and I often do AI workshops for schools or the general audience.
My Typical Day:

I can’t start my day without an espresso, and usually do so while I call my mum (who lives in Portugal!). After, I start work between 8:30 and 9:00. I get the boring stuff out of the way (like handling emails, preparing meetings) so I can then work on some code or writing up the science that we’ve done! I work from home, so I get to do all of this while wearing comfortable clothes!

About once a week I go to the office in London, where I have must-be-in-person meetings! Sometimes, I have to go in to record a podcast which is always a lot of fun!

After spending most of the day in front of the laptop, after my work finishes, I like to turn off screens and read. Before I do that, I practice my husband’s language in Duolingo (Polish!).
What I'd do with the prize money:

There’s two things I would kickstart with the prize money:

I would make a free service to transcribe science audio podcasts so that they are accessible for everyone.

I would buy a openAI subscription so that I could fully utilise the available AIs in public engagement activities – I love to do workshops where we are hands-on and sometimes that’s not possible!

Candidate CV questions (extra)

Education:

All my schooling before university was public schools in Coimbra, Portugal

Integrated Masters in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Coimbra, Portugal

PhD in Image Analysis in Neurobiology at the University of Manchester, UK
Work History:

My first ever job was at Pizza Hut when I was 17!

Since then, I’ve worked as a tutor, as a library monitor and as a teaching assistant.

After the PhD, I worked as a postdoc for two years before I became a research fellow.
Current Job:

I am currently a Research Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute.
Employer:

The Alan Turing Institute, London

My Interview
- What did you want to be after you left school?
  
  Scientist or a writer
  
  Were you ever in trouble at school?
  
  Once... because I talked too much during class!
  
  If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
  
  I would LOVE to have a bakery or a book shop!
  
  Who is your favourite singer or band?
  
  Bastille... and they have been for a while.
  
  What's your favourite food?
  
  Best snack: roasted chestnuts. Best food: codfish prepared in a very specific Portuguese way! (codfish with cream)
  
  If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
  
  If I had to spend my wishes on myself: I would wish all the time I could to read all the books in my "To Read Pile", a nice comfortable salary so I wouldn't have to think about money.... and a dog! But if I could spend it with everyone else, I would much rather use them to make people's lives better.
  
  Tell us a joke.
  
  What do you call a fish without an eye? A fsh!