#sheblindedmewithscience – meet Suzi Gage

This is the fourth in a series of blogs by the five ScienceGrrls who featured in “She Blinded Me With Science”.  If you haven’t yet seen the video, it’s here and all sales proceeds are being donated to ScienceGrrl!

Suzi Gage

photo credit – The Bristol Post

My name’s Suzi Gage, and I’m a researcher at the University of Bristol, investigating associations between substance use and mental health, using large datasets.

In the ‘She Blinded Me With Science’ video I spoke to Ben Roper, the filmmaker, about the work I did for my PhD, which I’m just finishing right now (submitting 1st December – wish me luck!).

Making the video was loads of fun, I really enjoy talking about the science I do, although getting excited about graphs and statistics reminds me of what a nerd I am! Having said that, I’m going to earn super nerd points among my friends for getting Stata (the statistical software I use) in to a music video!

So watch me here!
[fve]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfFSxH3vPMQ[/fve]

In my research I used data from a study called Children of the 90s, which has collected huge amounts of data on a group of children born in the early 1990s. Children of the 90s logoThroughout their childhood, the children have been sent questionnaires, have come in for interviews, and have been poked and prodded and had various bodily samples taken, all in the name of science. With the data collected, researchers like me can look at what environmental factors are associated with health.

The information I’ve used is mainly from the questionnaires and interviews (about drug use habits, and their mental health), although I also used some of the genetic data that has been collected too.

I hope that this video will be another step towards showing anyone, but in particular girls at school making their choices about what to study, that scientists come in all sorts of shapes, sizes…and genders. One day, projects like Science Grrl won’t be needed, and referring to ‘female scientists’ will be as silly as saying ‘male scientists’, we’ll all just be ‘scientists’. Until then, I’m going to shout as loud as I can that girls can be scientists too, and that, as Science Grrl says, ‘science is for everyone’.

Suzi Gage @soozaphone