Do you think hope has a place in the scientific process, do you think it is a part of your job description?

I definitely think so. Because without hope, why do science? You do it to try and find more information so that people can find solutions to problems or understand the world. And if you don't have hope, it's hard to have the drive to do it. I wouldn't be wading through 13,000 rows of data if I didn't hope to find something that would make the world better.

How do you feel about the relationship between the research and finding solutions?

I think hope is more a part of the journey because you need it to push you along. Sometimes the solution may not be what you were looking for, but it is something. My team talks about it a lot. Even if you have data that doesn't support your hypothesis, it's still a result of some import. Having a result tells you more information, than not. Hope is more important in the journey.

So have you had any moments in the lab or in the field where hope was eclipsed by setbacks?

Yes, yesterday actually. I was trying to work through R and create a scatter plot, but there’s so much data! It has been a big problem for us: there’s so much and we don’t know how to deal with it. I was really struggling. I worked on it for four hours and the end of the day, I thought, ‘I just need to take a walk and come back to this tomorrow.’