Post doctoral research fellow

Dr Patricia Lawlor is involved in the world's first gene therapy trial for Parkinson's disease. Picture / Fotopress

Name: Dr Patricia Lawlor
Age: 37
Role: Post doctoral research fellow, The University of Auckland, Department of Molecular Medicine and Pathology
Working hours: 8.30am-6pm, weekends as required
Average pay: Level one $54,000 and then upwards with experience
Qualifications: PhD, thesis on gene therapy treatment for Parkinson's disease

Describe how you got this job?

I did my PhD in this laboratory while working as a research technician and I stayed on in the same lab as a research fellow. I happened to be in the right place at the right time when Professor Matt During and Dr Debbie Young were setting up the lab.

Research technicians and research fellows don't have university-funded positions. We are paid by research grants. There's a bit of job insecurity because obtaining funding is highly competitive, but, while you go from grant to grant, they are often two to three years' long.

Describe what you do?

I undertake research projects in gene therapy for neuro-degenerative diseases. We are involved in the world's first gene therapy trial for Parkinson's disease.

Gene therapy research is a case of figuring out a candidate gene to look at, something you expect to cure the disease you are looking at, then getting that gene into a viral vector (an engineered virus), and testing the therapeutic effect of that viral vector in cells and then animals. Then you have to analyse and interpret the data.

The end result is publication of your data in peer review journals and using that data to apply for further grant funding to do more research. It may take 18 months of work to look at the effect of some therapy in Parkinson's disease.

What have you had to do to succeed at this job?

A lot of hard work and I guess learning a lot of lab techniques and being adaptable.

What sort of training do you need?

Through the progression of doing a bachelors degree to a masters to a PhD you learn lab techniques from others. I did a BSc at the University of Auckland, majoring in zoology, and followed that with a masters in zoology. Then I had a job as a research technician in the Department of Pharmacology.

I did that for seven years before enrolling for a PhD. When I came into this lab I did my PhD part-time while working as a lab technician.

What skills and qualities do you need?

Organisational skills, analytical skills, the ability to adapt and troubleshoot, the ability to see the big picture, and tenacity.

Best part of the job?

The variety in terms of techniques going on in the lab, interspersed with things like writing grants. I like working independently on my own project, but also being part of a larger lab team.

Most challenging part?

Grant writing. To convince somebody in one page of what you are trying to do and why it is worthy of funding.

How do you define success in this job?

Academically, success is defined by obtaining grant money and funding for research and authorship on high-impact peer reviewed scientific papers. Plus, with the Parkinson's disease gene therapy project, I have seen it go from conception, through cellular and animal studies, to being used in a patient.

Watching that progression is quite gratifying and makes you realise why you do research, so it can potentially have an impact on improving patients' lives.

What are your career hopes for the future?

Things like getting a major grant, which would then allow me to set up my own lab team. On a personal level, having a project that would result in some kind of treatment that gets used clinically for Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.

How would I go about getting a job like yours and what qualifications would I need?

A PhD is a pre-requisite for a research fellow. You need to do biology and chemistry at school and a BSc of some sort and follow that with a masters and PhD.

What advice would you have for someone contemplating a career like yours?

Get into a lab that produces good papers and has lots of grant funding. Pick good mentors, people who let you develop as a scientist independently within their lab.