 My name is Ben Albert. I'm a Kiwi. I grew up in Tokaroa small town in the middle of the North Island. I'm a pediatrician and before I came to Liggins, I was working as a junior doctor in pediatrics. Once I became a senior trainee, I met the professors who have become my supervisors and they encouraged me to do a PhD with them. My project has been looking at what we call insulin sensitivity. When people become obese, the hormone that controls your blood sugar, insulin, becomes less effective. And that seems to be the problem that causes all of these long-term things like diabetes and heart disease. So the projects that we did were around looking at whether we could use something simple like fish oil to improve the way insulin was working. I enjoy a number of things about my work at Liggins. One of the things I really like is that it has quite a different time course and outlook to some of the other things that I do as a doctor. Most of those things are quite short interactions. Well, doing research is something that you build over a period of years. And also I feel like I've got a bit of freedom to pursue my own ideas and come up with how I want to look at things. I think one of the most important things I've learned is how to manage my own time, to plan projects that are going to take a long time and see them through and to work out what I need to know in order to solve a problem. My supervisors are very supportive and very kind and fun people to work with. They're also very highly respected around the world. They have been very generous to me, not just in the time that they've spent helping me plan and carry out my research, but also in letting me be involved in other research projects that went a strict part of my PhD and helping me to get to conferences around the world to present that research. Postgraduate study, particularly a PhD, is the apprenticeship card for being a scientific researcher. It's also an opportunity to be part of a long-term research project and really see if that's something that you really want to do long term.