We spoke to Dr Hamish McMillan, winner of the 2012 Fair, who has recently completed a PhD in biochemistry and is now carrying out a post-doctoral position at the Cancer Research United Kingdom Cambridge Institute, researching breast cancer.
Hamish gave us a look into what makes his job so rewarding, his advice for students who are interested in a career in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) industry, and was even able to tell us about his winning science fair project from 2012! Check out his Questions & Answers below.
What has your tertiary and career path looked like since finishing high school?
After high school I went straight into undergraduate study at the University of Otago doing a Bachelor of Science (BSc). At the end of my BSc, I decided to do a Master of Science (MSc) with the intention of going overseas for a PhD, but after one year of my MSc project my supervisors said that if I wanted to, they would support me in upgrading my MSc into a PhD on the project I was currently working on. This involved the opportunity to spend some time in Cambridge (UK) learning some new techniques.
I decided to take this opportunity and successfully upgraded into a PhD which I finished at the start of 2021, graduating in December 2021. From there I reached out to Professor Carroll at the Cancer Research United Kingdom (CRUK) Cambridge Institute whose lab I visited during my PhD, and they were keen to have me back for post-doctoral studies. I then applied for, and was awarded, the Sir Ronald Kay Science Fellowship from BCFNZ to support my move and research at CRUK Cambridge Institute.
I am currently a post-doc in Prof. Carroll’s lab working primarily on the transcriptional underpinnings of breast cancer metastasis
What inspired you to pursue your chosen career path? Did you always want to do this?
I’ve always been curious about how the world works, and how the human body functions. Since at least my early teens I have wanted to go into scientific research, but it wasn’t until a lot later I decided what type of research I wanted to do.
I decided to pursue cancer research primarily because it intersects understanding how cells function on multiple levels with helping improve people’s lives.
It is nice knowing the work I do is not only very interesting to me but can result in changes to treatment and diagnosis that help people fighting cancer.
What is the most exciting and/or rewarding part of your job?
One aspect of the job that I really enjoy and is always exciting is getting new results. Nearly every time you run a new experiment you don’t know what the outcome is going to be, but you know that looking through a new dataset produced for the first time is going to be exciting and interesting. Sometimes it can then take a long time to understand the results, but there is something incredible about getting just another small piece of the puzzle that is how a cell works and slipping it into place.
Another part of the job that is very rewarding is interacting with patients and patient advocates. Getting to interact with people who are directly affected by cancer and representing those who could be impacted by your research is always a humbling experience. Conversations with patient advocates have been some of the most impactful I’ve been fortunate enough to have as part of my job.
What does your day-to-day look like?
My day-to-day varies quite a bit and involves more time at a computer answering emails than I might like to admit. One thing I do every day is tissue culture, which is maintaining and experimenting on cancer cell lines from patients. In our lab cell lines are core to what we do, as they allow us to test ideas and treatments with relative ease and speed.
Other things I do daily are assist PhD students in our lab and prepare material from experiments for methods such as proteomics and genomics. The bulk of the rest of the time is spent analysing or discussing data from previous experiments and designing new ones or answering emails…
At the institute I work in now we are very fortunate that we have amazing teams to help us with a lot of our experiments, so I am fortunate that most days I also get a good chunk of time to plan new crazy experiments that really push the limits of what is currently possible.
Were you involved in any extra-curricular STEM activities or groups during your time at school?
Outside the Science & Technology Fair and attending lots of events around Science Festival weeks I wasn’t involved in any STEM activities or groups outside normal science classes.
I was fortunate however, to visit a number of different labs around the University to learn about what they did.I would encourage anyone who is interested in science to reach out to labs who study things you’re interested in and ask to visit. I know many would be more than happy to show you what they do.
One of the secrets about scientists is that most of us love what we do and really enjoy telling interested people about it.
You won the Aurora Energy Science & Technology Fair in 2012 – can you tell us a little bit about your project?
In 2012, I worked on a project investigating the diversity in the Csd (Complementary Sex Determiner) gene in South Island honeybees.
Honeybees have an interesting way of determining sex, where males (drones) grow from an unfertilized egg so only have one copy of the genome, and therefore the Csd gene, but female bees (worker bees) grow from fertilised eggs and have two different copies of Csd gene. However, what can happen if there is too much inbreeding in an area is that a fertilised egg might have two identical copies of the Csd gene which causes pseudo-males.
Pseudo-males don’t function as drones or worker bees and are a waste of a hives resources. If genetic diversity at the Csd gene isn’t high enough, then not enough worker bees will be produced to support the hive. I wanted to understand if there was a difference in diversity at the Csd gene between in the “wild” and commercial honeybee populations.
I was fortunate enough to get to do some work in Professor Peter Dearden’s lab at the Department of Biochemistry at Otago where I used a PCR based technique called high-resolution melt analysis (HRM) to investigate how many different alleles of the Csd gene there was in bees from around the South Island. This also involved collecting bee samples from beekeepers and wild colonies for comparison.
What was your favourite part about being involved in the Aurora Energy Science & Technology Fair?
I really enjoyed the opportunity to do a science project that was separate to the smaller scale experiments you do at school. For me it was an opportunity to investigate something I was interested in at a depth that wasn’t possible any other way at the time. It also exposed me to a lot of scientific techniques you don’t normally get to experience until university. Seeing the different projects from around Otago at the science fair itself was also very interesting.
What school subjects would you recommend to students who are interested in a career in the STEM industry?
I think the obvious ones are biology, chemistry, physics and maths, but I would encourage people to stick with subjects like English or history as communication is extremely important in science.
Also, having a diverse range of subjects that teach you how to think in different ways is extremely valuable. I was fortunate enough to also do history and philosophy classes at high school, and I think learning to think about things in a variety of ways still helps me today when troubleshooting problems and understanding data.
What advice would you give to students who are wanting to pursue a career in the STEM industry?
I would say do it and remember that there are so many different avenues to take in STEM. Academia is not for everybody, but STEM has careers spanning a lot of areas from academia to industry. In my experience it can open a lot of doors to meet some interesting people and do work that could potentially change the world. If you work hard and follow what you enjoy then there is probably a job that will suit you.