Profile

I work on oxygen, the stuff we breathe that gives us energy to live, work and play. I specialise in blood – especially the red part (haemoglobin) that carries the oxygen around the body. Haemoglobin changes colour (from Manchester United bright red to West Ham United claret) when oxygen binds to it. So I can tell how much oxygen people have in their body by shining red light on their brain or muscle and looking at their haemoglobin. I recently worked with the UK short track Olympic speed skaters checking how well their muscles were using oxygen
 
In the past I have looked at the brains of newborn babies on intensive care units to check their oxygen. I don’t have any pictures of real babies but this image should show you how the red light can get into the brain.

And here’s a picture of my brain being investigated!

Oh and  in any  spare time I try and make artificial blood – this has led my work to be featured in the Sun newspaper as a possible cure for vampires! On the same theme here’s the vampire Ethan Hawke trying to make a blood substitute in the recent movie Daybreakers. Check out the green eyes…..

Back in the real world the idea is that a blood substitute would be long-lasting and guaranteed free of disease – currently these are potential problems with blood used in transfusions. But at the moment substitutes are more dangerous than real blood  – time to get back in the lab. to do more research!
In response to a question – here is a photo of me and my PhD student who helped with my performance on the “One Show” on the dangers of high salt diet on the brain See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/theoneshow/highlights/science/food_science.shtml
(note this is red food dye NOT blood)

I am currently writing a popular science book about Drugs in Sport. I’ve  called it “Run, Throw, Swim, Cheat”. I am worrying as the deadline in November as I have to make sure it is published in time for the 2012 Olympics! In the afternoon I go into my office at the university. I talk to my research team. We share ideas about what experiments we need to do. My students then have the fun part and go off into the laboratory and do the work. I go back to my office and have the more boring job of writing begging letters to people to pay for the experiments! My science is not cheap – the last bit of equipment cost £95,000 and over 1 billion pounds has been spent by my rivals in the USA trying (and failing) to make a blood substitute.