Skip main navigation

New offer! Get 30% off your first 2 months of Unlimited Monthly. Start your subscription for just £29.99 £19.99. New subscribers only. T&Cs apply

Find out more
Home / Healthcare & Medicine / Biology & Biotechnology / Small and Mighty: Introduction to Microbiology / Meet Spencer Long- a microbiology graduate

Meet Spencer Long- a microbiology graduate

In this video you’ll meet Spencer, a recent graduate who studied Biological Sciences at the University of Reading.
View transcript
17
Hi, I’m Spencer. I’m in my final year. That’s my fourth year of the placement year. I’m doing a bachelor’s in Biological Sciences, and I’ll be graduating this summer. I thought it would be really interesting to study this. it was a case of, it was something new, I hadn’t done much in the environment before, and I thought it was a bit more my cup of tea than just doing pathology or entirely lab based. I like to be outdoors, I like to work outdoors. Final year research project was with Dr. Renee Lee. And it was on environmental microbiology. We went to Wales, and we went caving in a cave called Ogof Ffynnon Ddu, which means “Cave of the Black Spring.”
49.4
And we were down there for a whole day, we must have spent about eight hours in the cave sampling and we got to look around all the cave system, go and see some interesting formations. I learned about all sorts of extreme microbes that can be residing in different environments and the sorts of processes that they utilise to metabolise different substrates and have different lifestyles in these diverse environments. And it’s very different from, say, what we typically use, which is human based pathogens or pathogens which are in settings similar to us in everyday life.
78.8
This environmental microbiology based research project has actually influenced me to take on a PhD at the National Oceanography Centre which is, although a slightly different environment which is based on the ocean, it’s still the same idea of going and discovering new things. I would definitely recommend doing a projects based around environmental microbiology. I really enjoyed going down to the cave in Wales, it was a really good experience, very different from anything else I’ve done through university or before university. And the fact that you get the opportunity to do this at Reading was a real highlight for me in my degree.

In this video you’ll meet Spencer, who studied Biological Sciences at the University of Reading. Spencer introduces his final year research project with Dr Renee Lee (who you met earlier in the course) on the extreme microbes which live in Ogof Ffynnon Ddu – Cave of the Black Spring in Welsh – which is in Upper Swansea Valley.

If you would like to hear more about cave-dwelling microbes, you can listen to an audio clip from Dr Renee Lee, which is available in the ‘Downloads’ section, below.

Spencer graduated from the University of Reading in June 2018 and is currently undertaking a PhD in marine microbiology within the Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre Southampton at the University of Southampton.

Want to keep learning?

This content is taken from University of Reading online course
Small and Mighty: Introduction to Microbiology
View Course
See other articles from this course
This article is from the online course:

Small and Mighty: Introduction to Microbiology

Created by
Join Now
This article is from the free online

Small and Mighty: Introduction to Microbiology

Created by
Join Now
FutureLearn - Learning For Life

Reach your personal and professional goals

Unlock access to hundreds of expert online courses and degrees from top universities and educators to gain accredited qualifications and professional CV-building certificates.

Join over 18 million learners to launch, switch or build upon your career, all at your own pace, across a wide range of topic areas.

Start Learning now

Register to receive updates

  • Create an account to receive our newsletter, course recommendations and promotions.

    Register for free