Region

Waikato

Job

Emma's job has a great deal of variety with lab work, field work, computer work, presentations, conferences and paper writing. Emma also enjoys the fact that there are many opportunities to learn new skills.

Emma is a Technical Officer at DairyNZ (formerly Dexcel). This role involves:

• discussing trial design and concepts with scientists and team members;
• getting materials and methods organised (including equipment, people, processes);
• ensuring everything happens on the day;
• doing the actual field work (collecting samples, gathering data);
• assisting scientists with research proposals, troubleshooting;
• paperwork: collection, collation, interpreting, working with scientists to extract data, writing some of the papers if appropriate.

Career Pathway

Emma was interested in science and biology at high school and chose to enrol for a BSc at Waikato University, majoring in Animal Biology. After finishing, she realised a further degree would be likely to lead to more research opportunities, so she did a Masters degree in Genetics. Emma did not want to do a PhD as she was keen to get into the workforce and use what she had learned (and earn some money!). Her first job was a short-term contract doing molecular biology work at AgResearch, which was followed by a permanent position as a research technician in a similar role. After that Emma spent a year doing research in molecular microbiology at HortResearch, and at the end of that project she got her job at DairyNZ in Hamilton.

Interests

Lots of sports! Touch, running, swimming, mountain biking, art, and photography.