 I run a laboratory looking at how single nerve cells in the brain process information. We work on so-called acute brain slices primarily. These are tissue taken from rodents, which we then keep alive in a dish, and then we use electrical recording methods and also optical methods to look at electrical signaling within single nerve cells. I think I'm fundamentally driven by trying to understand how the brain works because not only is it the most complex organ in our bodies and of course there are more and more diseases now, which is more and more prevalent in the population associated with disruption of brain function. So from a sort of point of view of trying to help society then it's absolutely critical we know more and more about the brain. Primarily I'm driven simply by the curiosity of trying to understand how the brain works because effectively your brain is who you are. It is what I am and I'd like to know how it's working. We hope that our research will help us understand how the brain processes information and we hope that through that understanding we'll have a better knowledge of what goes wrong in the brain during diseases such as epilepsy or Alzheimer's and if we understand what's going on then we might be in a better position to fix it.