Question: what inspired you to try and help prevent people from diseases?

Ailsa Powell answered on 19 Jun 2011:

When I was doing my A-levels I became more interested in how diseases work, what makes us sick and how the medicines we take to treat the illness work. I think this interest was sparked by chemistry where we were learning about how medicines are made and extracted salicylic acid (the basis of asprin) from willow bark. I think reading about the different degree courses on offer also made me more curious. This is why I chose to study Biochemistry with Medical Biochemistry, which combined classical biochemistry with the biochemistry of diseases. My PhD was in a technique that is a key part of drug development (X-ray protein crystallography).

So basically my inspriation was purely what I found interesting and wanted to learn a lot more about.