First up, do you have a telescope?
I do! But it is at my mum鈥檚 house, as I live in central London and the light pollution is extraordinary. I use my grandfather鈥檚 Zeiss binoculars from the first world war for birdwatching.
Advertisement
As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?
I wanted to be a vet, then a doctor. The world dodged a bullet there, as I would have been a horrible medic. I spent one day thinking I wanted to do astrophysics. I wanted to do something in science, but it took me a while to work out what.
Explain what you doin one easy paragraph.
I study human vocal communication. I am interested in why we sound the way we do, how our brains control this and how our brains decode information from human voices.
What do you love most about what you do?
I love looking at data, and I never saw a data set I found boring. I have immensely fond memories of analysing data and writing papers with colleagues and students.
Sum up your life in a one-sentence elevator pitch鈥�
I get to study brains, voices, speech and laughter, with the help of comedians, beatboxers and impressionists.
What鈥檚 the most exciting thing you鈥檝e worked on recently?
Right now, we are trying to look at what happens in the brain when we laugh helplessly, compared with when we laugh in a more communicative way. This is difficult, not least because it is hard to get people laughing in a brain scanner.
Were you good at science at school?
Yes, and I quite often won the science prize. Our headteacher was a former synthetic chemist and she helped make science quite aspirational.
If you could send a message back to yourself as a kid, what would you say?
Hold on, and keep your nerve. Don鈥檛 try to be something that you aren鈥檛.
If you could have a long conversation with any scientist, living or dead, who would it be?
Charles Darwin. I would love to talk to him about his work on emotions: he got so much right, and he was the first scientist to see the importance of laughter as an emotional expression.
What鈥檚 the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you?
There is an Inspiral Carpets record on which Mark E. Smith keeps shouting 鈥淣o one ever said it was gonna be easy鈥�, and I take quite a lot of strength from that. There is also a quote by Kurt Vonnegut that I find extremely helpful: 鈥淵ou are who you pretend to be, so be careful who you pretend to be.鈥�
Do you have an unusual hobby, and if so, please will you tell us about it?
I joined a Facebook group called Photo of my Thermostat, where you can post photos of your thermostat, except on Fridays, when you can post a picture of anyone鈥檚 thermostat. I now scope all buildings to try to findinteresting thermostats.
鈥淢ark E. Smith said: 鈥楴o one ever said it was gonna be easy.鈥� I take quite a lot of strength from that鈥�
What鈥檚 the best thing you鈥檝e read or seen in the past 12 months?
I absolutely loved the revival of Amadeus at the National Theatre in London. It was outstanding.
How useful will your skills be after the apocalypse?
Do you need any science? No? Then I鈥檓 good at cooking and I鈥檓 very good at organising things.
OK, one last thing: tell us something that will blow our minds鈥�
Only humans have chins, and we have no idea why.
