Jo Douglas-Harris

"Before I'd completed the quiz, if you'd asked me what things I enjoy most about my job, I'd have said solving problems, working in teams and organising things. This matches up really well with being an invetigator, communicator and manager!"

"Being a scientist is a much more varied role than people think. I do spend some of my time in the lab doing experiements, and then I'll spend time analysing data. But I also get to work in teams with people from across the business including manufacuring, marketing, supply chain and health and safety. In these teams, we all work together to ensure we can deliver projects that will help our company make innovative new products, as well as making current products in a more environmentally friendly way, or in a more efficient way. The work I do in the lab informs our manufacturing sites about what changes would be best to make - you want to have confidence that something is going to work before you try it out at large scale in the factory."

"When I was at school I had no idea what I wanted to be when I was a grown up. I enjoyed Chemistry and Maths at GCSE and A Level so decided to look for universities where I could do both, at least to begin with. I settled on Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, with maths as an outside subject. I enjoyed getting to choose other outside subjects and also studied Philosophy and Social Anthropology. I finished my degree and still wasn't sure what I wanted to do, so decided I'd stay at University and ended up doing a PhD at the University of Bath studying Laundry Detergents. Since then I've worked on production of sugar from sugar beet, and now I work on Titanium Dioxide pigments. These pigments are used in inks which print onto packaging like drinks cans and crisp packets."

"I absolutely love baking, which isn't too surprising, given my love of Chemistry! I find baking and doing experiements in the lab is quite similar really; you follow a set of instructions, and hope for a certain outcome at the end. Even if you don't get the result you expect, maybe your cake doesn't rise as you'd hoped, then you've learnt something along the way. "

"There's no such thing as a typical day for me. Some days I'll be in the lab, and with a lot of my lab work it's important that everything gets done in one day, so they can be longer days. Other days, I'll spend a lot of time replying to emails, preparing presentations about my lab work and projects, in meetings with other scientists about what we're going to do next in the lab, or in meetings with different people who work in a range of functions across the business talking about how we're all supporting these projects. In my role, I have to be quite flexible, as I might have planned what I'll be doing for the rest of the week, but something urgent will come up and my plans I have change. I like this as it keeps things interesting, and I love the variety of projects I get to work on. "

"A levels: Chemistry, Maths, Further Maths and PhilosophyAS level: PhysicsUndergraduate degree: Chemistry (MChem) at the University of EdinburghPostgraduate degree: PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of BathAs well as my qualifications, I've always looked for other opportunities to get qualifications or complete training courses. I've completed some modules with the Open University, and have qualifications in Project Management."