Nicole Pamme talks about magnetism, microfluidics and the research rollercoaster. Interview by Merlin Fox.

	Nicole Pamme is a lecturer at the University of Hull, UK. Her research interests focus on bioanalysis in microfluidic devices and combination of magnetism and microfluidics.

Who or what inspired you to become a scientist? 

Nobody in my family is a scientist; I'm the only one to come out! I guess I was interested in the scientific subjects in school and so decided to study chemistry at university. It's fair to say that teachers had been encouraging at that early stage, and I certainly didn't plan end up where I am now - it was just always a step further and now I'm finding myself working as a lecturer! 

What projects are you working on at the moment? 

The bulk of our projects are about using magnetic forces and microfluidic devices. We are placing magnets on the outside of the chip to manipulate things inside the chip. With these magnets you can pull particles or cells, you can stop them, you can really play around with them. And that enables you to do things in a much more efficient way than in conventional systems. It's particularly useful for bioanalysis inside a microfluidic device with continuous flow, which is typically quite labour and time intensive. 

What's going to be the next big thing in your field? 

A really interesting area that's becoming more prominent is the idea of a 'human on a chip' - which could sound a bit scary! People are trying to work with more than just single cells so that they can mimic tissues. They build tissue layers in microfluidic devices and you can envisage having a chip with some stomach, kidney, liver or even  cancerous-like tissue that you could test with a drug. In some way this could mimic organ function,  of course it will not be exactly like the real thing, but it might give us a hint as to what might happen and could be used as an alternative to animal experiments. 

Also, I think, there were people always hoping that there's going to be the big "killer"     devices, for things such as forensic DNA analysis, where several people have developed quite good systems already, and this will gain much more prominence now because the government has put a lot of money into this kind of thing. 

 What benefits do you find from attending academic conferences? 

I like to hear a lot of oral presentations, which is great because somebody speaking about their research is much easier than reading all the journals. It's a good way of picking up a lot of the new trends easily too, because I am away from the day-to-day office life and can really concentrate.  

I like the poster presentations too as I can speak to the person doing the experiment and find out the nitty-gritty about the work, which isn't always published in papers.  

Finally the networking is great and people get to know about each other and collaborations get formed. This is important these days as most funding bodies like to see you collaborating with other people. 

So far, you've worked in Germany, Japan, and the UK, how does the chemical community differ between countries? 

I've experienced every place from different perspectives, so I've got a different viewpoint towards the chemical communities in the different countries which makes it quite difficult to compare exactly what the communities are like. What I would say, is that in every culture, you really have very distinct rules and ways of dealing with problems and people.   It   takes a little while to understand the system and then a while longer to know how to play it. 

One difference I noticed in Japan is that because they are quite far over in East Asia they have to make long flights to meet other people. But at home they have a much closer national network than anywhere in Europe. They have societies that meet once or twice a year so the Japanese researchers know each other a lot more.  

You published an excellent review on micro fluidics and magnetism in Lab On A Chip in 2006. Why do you think there is more and more interest in these areas?  

I mentioned earlier that magnetic forces are quite nice to use in microfluidics because they can be put on the outside of the system and are not normally influenced by properties in the solution, such as pH or ionic strength. If you work with electric forces, the electrodes always need to be in contact with the liquid, and so can interfere or be influenced by the solution. Also magnetic particles are a mature technology and are routinely used in analytical and bioanalytical chemistry.  

What advice could you give to anyone considering a PhD? 

I think it is important to realise that a PhD is a bit like a rollercoaster, it's a bit up and down. You will probably be very motivated in the beginning but then there will be difficult patches and you really need to work through a problem. So you need to have real enthusiasm and curiosity for the project, otherwise it will be very tough to   live through the hard patches.  

And finally, if you weren't a scientist, what would you do?  

At school I enjoyed learning languages and even now when I go travelling, I always like to learn a few words of the language and if I have more time I'll learn a bit more. So, I would probably want to do something using languages, like translating or helping people in different cultures.