Profile

I am Jamil. I have lived in various cities across the world and currently live in Edinburgh. I work in a specialised research centre at the University of Edinburgh studying how bacteria and viruses overpower our immune system. Away from the lab I love escaping to local forests and parks to discover new wildlife.

This image shows Blackford pond near to where I live in Edinburgh. Its a wonderful place to escape to! I love to come here and see all the different wildlife including new birds such as bullfinches and tadpoles (images below).

This is a beautiful bullfinch I saw at Blackford.

Here are some new tadpoles in the Blackford Pond!

I also enjoy playing music, particularly my guitar as well as dancing and playing tennis. Many years ago I competed in dance competitions worldwide and was ranked for my country.

Here is my favourite instrument-my wonderful guitar!

I don’t currently have any pets but would really love a pomeranian one day!

I am what scientists call a medical microbiologist. This means I enjoy learning about different microbes that cause various diseases in humans and other species. I absolutely love viruses-they are my passion! My research uses various different models that we call cells in a process known as cell culture. I grow these cells in large volumes and then infect them with my different viruses to determine what the virus changes in these cells. This allows us to better understand infection and to develop new treatments for future generations. The image below shows an example of cell culture.

Here are 2 different groups of cells. The orange colour of the media indicates there is an infection and the pink colour are healthy and happy cells.

This image shows me in the lab after a long break and I couldn’t be happy to be back and playing with viruses again!

To understand this process we use various techniques from advanced microscopes to see the infections in live time as well as protein and genetic analysis.

This image shows a process for extracting genetic material from our infected cells. The tube shows three layers that match to protein, DNA and viral genetic material called RNA.

At the end of the process we have this white spot which is pure viral genetic material that we can now use in our experiments.

From all of the information we get from these experiments we build a picture of how the virus infects these cells of our immune system, what it disrupts in those cells, what those targets do and how we can restore the function of the cell so the virus cannot win!

I always wake up early to begin my day and sometimes I am lucky to catch amazing sights including the gorgeous Edinburgh sunrise.

I captured this sunrise from my bedroom window in Edinburgh!

As a medical microbiologist my experiments are very exciting. The start of the process involves making sure the immune cells I need to use are ready and happy to be infected by the different viruses I will use. This is the first part of my day.

This image shows some beautiful immune cells from the lungs before they become infected with a virus.

After confirming my immune cells are happy I then infect them with a virus and assess the infection process using various experiments during the rest of the day.

These images show immune cells infected with a virus now trying to interact with a different, non-infectious target. The circle structures are the new non-infectious target. The extremely bright colours show the amount of virus inside the cells! This is done on a high power microscope and is super cool.

I also use another technique called electron microscopy which is extremely powerful and lets me see more detail about my cells.

These are images from an electron microscope showing how immune cells have changed with a virus (at the top) and no virus at the bottom. The difference in this experiment was much less wavy and bubble like folds in the infected immune cells.

The end of my day is devoted to explaining my science and teaching my topic to the public and my students. I like to be interactive in these sessions by drawing, making the public draw images and creating fancy artwork from bacteria!

Here I am explaining to a member of the public how we grow immune cells in a lab and how we infect them with different microbes.

This image is an example of my teaching where I made students understand the structure of an immune cell by drawing it themselves.

Finally at the end of a long and enjoyable day I take a long walk and then cook amazing food, watch tv and fall asleep with a good book on my sofa!

Here is an image of the beautiful sunset in Edinburgh from one of my after work walks 🙂

And here is a beautiful home cooked meal I made to relax after a long day. Lovely stuffed vegetables with rice and tomato sauce!