A novel, an album - oh, and a PhD in bioengineering

As a kid, Sam Simmonds drew cartoons - monsters, heroes, weapons. He and his friends had competitions; he wanted to be a cartoonist.

Later, drawing was replaced by a passion for playing and composing psychedelic rock music – something Sam (now Dr Sam Simmonds) still does, alongside writing dark fantasy fiction.

But when he thought about his future job, he drew on other loves: science and maths.

“I wanted to be a doctor, but I thought about the long hours and the years of study and I realised I had too many other interests; I needed a job that would give me enough time for my hobbies. 

“So I decided to do an engineering degree, with the explicit goal of getting into bioengineering in year two. I loved biology and I liked the idea of the practical problem-solving that comes with engineering.”

Sam finished undergraduate study with first class honours and research experience from summer internships, including at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, where he also found “a love of academic investigation, engineering design and physiology”.

Which was just as well, because finding a bioengineering job in Covid-stricken 2021 New Zealand was nigh-on impossible. 

Instead, Sam searched out a PhD topic and chose Auckland Bioengineering Institute’s Dr Tim Angeli-Gordon and his gut disorders research laboratory, the TARGET Lab.

“Tim was super friendly, the project he laid out was clear and well defined; a genuine problem needing to be solved.”

Sam’s particular PhD research looked to use new high-resolution electrodes developed by another ABI star academic, Professor Peng Du, to understand how electrical signals moved between the stomach and the small intestine, and whether there were biomarkers that could identify gut dysfunction.

It was science at its most exciting – and challenging. He loved the international conferences “where I was able to feed off the excitement of my academic community and proudly share my own findings. These spaces truly were the ‘fuel of the fire’ when it came to motivating and inspiring me.”

But he also loved the meticulous work in the lab with the research team. 

“It sounds dry, but spending hours setting up and micro-managing fiddly equipment was all worth it when the squiggly lines appeared on the monitor.”

The lines represented the complex and largely uncharted electrical slow wave movements across the stomach.

“I felt genuine excitement at the idea of diving deeper into data no one else had captured before.”

Since finishing his PhD, Sam has been working with Auckland Bioengineering Institute gastrointestinal diagnostic technology spinout company Alimetry; he appreciates working at a place where research can have an almost immediate impact on clinicians and their patients.

And he has time outside work for his creative projects – the current one involves creating a ‘psych/prog rock’ album alongside a fantasy novel, the two working together to tell the same story.

“I came to the conclusion writing and music felt like the same creative output. Why not let them fuel each other?”

Tim Angeli-Gordon says Sam was a pleasure to work with, not just because he was “incredibly intelligent, consistently innovative, and brought his whole self into his PhD” but because of his creativity and wide range of interests.

“Our supervision meetings were always a delight, and inevitably, I learned something new. Whether it was about music, art, jiu jitsu, or the physiology of the stomach, Sam was always uncovering new ground.”