Question: What made you want to work with real blood?

Chris Cooper answered on 16 Mar 2010:

It basically started by looking at the red protein in blood – haemoglobin. I was part of team looking how changes in its colour could be used to monitor the brain’s function. So this was looking at blood inside the body by shining light on people’s head.

Later I started looking at blood I had taken out of people. The chemistry was similar to other proteins I had been working on, but seemed to have practical benefit. This related to diseases such as heart attacks and stroke. So I could look at the same chemistry I was interested in, but because it was important for health people paid me to do it!