We are very pleased to welcome the fifth team member and the first scientist and engineer to Science Practice – Dr Tempest van Schaik. Tempest has just completed her PhD in Bioengineering at Imperial College and we are thrilled that she is bringing with her a variety of new skills as well as an insider’s perspective to our projects. I will let Tempest introduce herself below. – JK
Hi, my name is Tempest and I'm an engineer with a creative side.
I'm South African and attended Wits University where I did a degree in Biomedical Engineering. I spent about half my time in the Engineering Faculty tinkering with robots and the other half at the medical school where I learnt to cut out a human brain. After that degree I got a second undergraduate degree in the more traditional Electrical Engineering. I then moved to London to do my PhD in Bioengineering at Imperial College where I worked on a thesis called Electrochemical Sensors For Biomedical Applications which involved growing cells on gold chips to study cancer.
So how did I end up at a company like Science Practice? As the daughter of an artist I grew up on a diet of art and crafts, did equally well at art and science at school and very nearly studied art at university. But instead I decided to pursue art in my own time and in parallel with my studies I produced art, design, illustration and photography for competitions, collaborations and freelance projects.
After keeping my scientific and creative pursuits separate for so long I was determined to find a way to combine them, so I was really fortunate to come across Science Practice. In my role as Scientist, I’m currently exploring what the clinic of the future might look like, and am particularly interested in future diagnostics, organ-on-a-chip technology and low-cost microfluidics (which will feature in an upcoming blog post). I’ve started hoarding materials and hope to help establish a workshop/lab/hackspace in our studio. The range of scientific topics I’ve been researching has been so varied that I now know about negligible senescence, gregarious locusts, transhumanism, the graveyard orbit and 3D-printing Nutella. My favourite thing about Science Practice so far? A mutual appreciation of science fiction and the fact that no idea is too weird. Liver-shaped pillows, messages for aliens, mind-controlled protein production and aspic loaf are equally fascinating topics that can be earnestly explored.
