Question: @jess how pleased are you that you are still in i'm a scientist get me out of here are getting really anxious about the next round i would be if i was in your situation i love what you want to do in the future and love the way that you know what things you want and the challenges you have set for yourself are amazing i wish i had the brains and ideas that you had and i am so glad you are still in the competion why i am writing to you so much is because i want to find out more about you and more about your jobs and hobbies your amazing and all i want to say to you is i'm voting for you so just keep doing what your doing cause it's working and i hope you get the money to do what you want to do with it because you deserve to win it.

Jessica Chu answered on 23 Jun 2011:

Hi Dior,

hehe my longest question 🙂 yey!!
I am super excited still being involved and talking to you guys!! Makes my day 😛
Dior – I am sure you have the brains too just by the questions you have posted previously- made me think really hard on how to answer them!!
I wasn’t particularly good or bad in sciences classes back in school but I just found it interesting. So I think my point is that yes being clever helps but if someone is clever and does no work all day.. they won’t really get a good grade when it comes to exams etc. If they do well and said they haven’t done any work.. they are probably lying 😉
Hard work is important and if you enjoy what you are doing.. then I think you can see it as a hobby rather than work 😛 If I ever get to interview people – I would want to see passion.. it is passion about the work that keeps any scientists going far and not get bored ..!!
I have also noticed that brains comes with age and the amount of time you have spent doing something! But no one knows everything!!! It is important to know where we can get the information from – as long as you know where to look for answers.. that’s all you need! I see lecturers and students are googling things (even my tutor) so don’t worry about it 🙂

I think back in school they try to give you a taste of everything (even if it is something you don’t find interesting) but when you do science at a uni or something then you can be more specific and choose what you want to know and do 🙂

I think you guys are the future .. because when I get older.. the younger generation of scientists will be solving problems we can’t solve now! So I want to tell you guys more about different science things so hopefully you won’t find it boring (like learning from textbooks in a classroom) and want to study a science subject at uni or something?

Thank you so much for your questions and comment. This makes me feel SO happy!!!!! Can’t tell you through words!!

About my work:

I am looking at natural chemicals in Malaysian Rainforest plants to see if they contain new chemicals for treating cancer, in particular, cancer that arise from the epithelial tissue layer. 85% of cancers develop from this epithelial layer whereas the other cancers can be from connective tissues (cartilage, ligament etc.) and blood cancers.
However, there are still no ‘super’ good treatment for these types of cancers from epithelial cells. So I think it is worth looking into! We have quite good treatments for blood cancers (leukemia)!
Over 50% of drugs out there for different diseases are from nature… and in anticancer drugs – more than 60% is from nature. A person named Sneader have estimated that less than 1% out of the 320,000 plant species have been used in medicine – so that leaves us the other 99% to look at! which means .. it is very likely a few plants out there will have new chemicals to help us treat all sorts of horrible diseases!

Brazil have a higher diversity of rainforest plants… as well as many other tropical countries!! Lots of reseachers from all over the world are working on natural products too whether it’s marine life… plants, berries, bacterias
Researchers from countries like – malaysia, thailand, japan, nigeria, brazil, czech republic (and other european countries), hawaii and australia etc.
So if you do research in this area – most likely to get to travel around a bit -bonus! 😉

My hobbies are travelling – love learning about different countries and culture, cooking, going out (work hard.. play harder!! hehe), cinema (if a good film is on!) and learning to ski- all these things I like to do with my friends or family!!
Feel free to ask me anything you want or ideas? On BBC website.. the science and technology section- you can keep up to date with sciencey stuff 🙂