Careers: The journey is never a straight one (V0192)
Julie Walton always loved science because it is novel and exciting. Having done a range of different courses at university, she is now working on treatments for melanoma cancer.
Duration: 1:12
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This clip was produced in conjunction with NZBio.
Transcript
Julie Walton (Malaghan Institute): As long as I can remember I was always going to do science. I actually don’t remember a day when I wasn’t going to do science, and really enjoyed it at school; it was just a topic that I loved. I loved the novelty of it. It was always new and exciting, and particularly in this area - it’s really a new field, it’s an up and coming field.
So I did science at university. I did biochemistry and genetics. I did zoology as well, and I ended up…I did a masters in molecular parasitology which is veterinary studies, and then I came to work here. And they all sound very different, but in reality the skills that you learn in different areas are very transferable very often in science. So the biochemistry, I use a bit of it now; the genetics I use a bit of it now; and the molecular parasitology; and veterinary studies, I did a lot of cell culturing and it was actually a vaccine development programme. So similar to what I am doing now. So you can actually really cross into different areas. I never expected to be in cancer research, but it’s just the way it evolved. And I think science generally does evolve.
