Women in Science
Messages for others thinking about a career in science
Video clip: Angela has found that encouraging researchers to pursue their interests will bring success for everyone involved.
The other thing is that I think my success, in my career so far, where it has gone, has been because I've pursued what I'm interested in so, you know, we have fitted in to research themes, we've, and I'm very happy to be part of larger scale initiatives across the university I think they're very important and there's a place for them. What I think fundamentally that the way we as a university and as departments will succeed, is by allowing researchers the freedom to pursue what really motivates them, okay we can decide on what the important questions are and I think we largely do do that as individuals within a department and contribute to the overall mission of the department and the university. But too much structure and too much prescription about what we should be doing, and how we should be conducting our research, I think is detrimental to that.
So I think you need a balance of all of those things, so I think being joined up, having an overarching vision and having researchers that together meet that vision is all very important but, at the same time, there needs to be sufficient academic freedom, freedom for researchers to pursue what really motivates them because that's the way I think you'll get the best research out of everybody in an institution like this.