Nicole Lee
Nicole Lee
I’m Nicole Lee, I work in Austin Hospital’s Zajac group. My PhD topic is identifying the mechanisms of male sex hormones in increasing skeletal muscle mass.
After I finished my Honours project, I sort of looked around for very interesting projects and I had two in mind, one of which was Jeffrey’s project. And I contacted Helen McClean, who is now my supervisor, and they agreed to give me a studentship which is quite a substantial amount of money, which can support me throughout the PhD life - and the project is very interesting to me and they are one of the few groups in Australia that are working on androgens and skeletal muscle. And so I made up my mind and joined his group and it has been great ever since.
Why is it important?
Because …, people who are suffering from muscle-wasting disorders such as AIDS patients, muscular dystrophy patients, haven’t had any cure for their disorders yet. So by gaining better understanding of androgens and skeletal muscle, hopefully, ultimately, our group can develop a mechanism which can explain these diseases and ultimately develop a therapy for their disorders.
I’m post-confirmation stage. I’m into my third year now. That involves a lot of paper writing, experimental work and also thesis writing.
Motivation..
After I graduated from my Honours project, I found that I only have a very basic understanding of physiology, genetics, biochemistry and other aspects of medicine and so I wanted to pursue more in this biochemistry field; biomedicine field, so I decided to do a PhD.
Choosing a supervisor, topic...
I’d heard about Jeffrey Zajac and his lab in the Austin Hospital before I started choosing my PhD project and I’ve talked to some of my clinician friends and they all know about Jeffrey and they have all given me positive comments about Jeffrey. So it then sounded like a very good option for me when I was choosing my PhD.
The supervisor and the project topic are very important. Jeffrey Zajac and Helen McClean have been very famous names in the endocrinological field and I’m drawn to their popularity and also their project seems very interesting.
One of my options for a future career is still working in research. Hopefully I can still work in the endocrinological field to still apply my knowledge in other directions, not necessarily on skeletal muscle, but it could be on other parts of the body.
The difficult thing in doing my PhD is also the most necessary thing in finishing my PhD, which is: think, analyse things critically and to be able to give a presentation in front of experts in endocrinology and writing up an academic paper. But these are all very important in our PhD lives, so I’m still coping with them and trying to do my best.