• Question: If you were given 3 billion pounds what are you most likely to spend it on - or invent?

    Asked by esther4367 to James, Jen, Susanna on 21 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Susanna Martin

      Susanna Martin answered on 21 Mar 2013:

      that depends is the 3billion for me personally or for my research?
      If it’s for me i’d definitely by myself a house and give some money to my family!
      If it’s for general research then I think i’d run a competition for early career researchers (people who have just finished their phd’s) and find out what they would spend it on and then fund a mixture of studies. And if it was for my personal research then I think i’d spend the money setting up an afterschool group for students near the uni to come and help me with research, I think it’s really good to get young people involved in research, especially if it’s going to affect them so it would be cool to run some kind of Uni Research Club.
      What would you do with it?

    • Photo: Jen Todd Jones

      Jen Todd Jones answered on 21 Mar 2013:

      Hey Esther!

      Great question, 3 billions pounds is a lot of money! Phew the things I could do with it 😉

      First I’d use some towards Fairtrade work (http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/), I have been volunteering to work with Fairtrade campaigns for about seven years now and I’d love to be able to give some money towards their campaigns and the work they do to raise public awareness about Fairtrade food and other products and why we should buy it. I’d also give some to the charity Mind who help those with mental health difficulties large or small.

      I’d spend some of it on my own research and work in the really interesting stuff it can sometimes be hard to get to, like interesting work with patients with specific brain damage, bringing these together so that we can try and help understand how the brain damage happened and what it means.

      And finally I’d use some to provide money for people who would like to get into research early in their career as scientists, sometimes it can be hard to get money to be a scientist so these people have to go elsewhere and get other jobs which really isn’t fair. I’d also like to fund some research on really silly but fun things, like whether your brain function would be improved if you ate too many fruit pastilles!

      Jen

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