Former goat farmer celebrates her scientific success
Funding of almost £1m will enable microbiologist to explore potentially fatal fungus
Published:
A FORMER goat farmer who embarked on a career as a microbiologist at the age of 40 is celebrating her academic success after receiving nearly £1million towards her studies.
Alex Brand will use her Medical Research Council New Investigator grant and the Royal Society University research fellowship to explore a fungus which can cause fatal infections in people with weakened immune systems, such as cancer patients or those recovering from organ transplants.
About 500 people die every year in the UK after the Candida albicans fungus escapes from their guts into the bloodstream, then forms a potentially deadly mass on their internal organs.
Mrs Brand hopes her research will lead to ways to prevent C. albicans – the same fungus which causes thrush – from mutating and attaching itself to devices such as catheters and feeding tubes.
The funding awards are recognition for the 53-year-old, who left school with secretarial qualifications, a few A levels, and a wish “to do something exciting”.
Her jobs included a stint with a London advertising agency and being sports news announcer for Voice of Indonesia Radio in Jakarta, in between travelling the world with her husband, who worked in the oil industry.
Some nine moves and two children later, the family moved to a small holding at John’s Forest, near Thainstone, Inverurie, in 1990, where Mrs Brand became Aberdeenshire’s only registered goats’ milk producer, as well as a full-time mother.
In 1995, aged 40, she decided the time was right to embark on a new career in science and, after completing an access course, began a full-time biochemistry degree at Aberdeen University, graduating with first-class honours five years later.
The new funding awards, amounting to £894,326 over the next five to eight years, will enable Mrs Brand – who gave up the goats to complete her PhD five years ago – to set up her own research team and equip a new laboratory to further her studies.
