Jaime Willis
PhD candidate Jaime Willis is interested in how animals survive in extreme environments and how this could be applied to humans.
Programme: Doctor of Philosophy in Biological Sciences
"When I was younger watching David Attenborough I was inspired by all the weird and wonderful animals across the world. I was especially interested in animals that coped with environmental extremes.
“I was interested in understanding how these animals cope with these environmental conditions on a fundamental level, and how this may be applied to human pathologies in a translational manner.
“Hibernation/hypometabolic states, for example, is a response to periods of scarcity (lack of food, water, oxygen) which enable some individuals to persist until conditions improve and life carries on.
“For my PhD in particular, if these hibernation/hypometabolic states are inducible in species that don’t undergo them naturally, this opens the door for several translational interventions; from increasing survival time for organs during transplant surgeries to induced hibernation in astronauts during long-haul space voyages.
The on-off switch for hibernation has many applications.
"I love solving problems and postgraduate degrees provide a fantastic opportunity to do this on a daily basis. You are also investigating phenomenon that don’t have set answers, and as such requires novel ways of thinking to come up with solutions.”