• Question: If you got even more money what would you do with it and why?

    Asked by anon-188663 to Warren, Shanti, Pizza Ka Yee, Paul, Nadine, Alex on 5 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Alex Reid

      Alex Reid answered on 5 Nov 2018:

      It depends how much more you are talking about:
      – 2 x the money, double the promotional equipment for science outreach work.
      – 10 x the money, a super sweet science van to drive the above equipment about in.
      – 25 x the money, I would take myself and the other five scientists here on a fun holiday trip to the Galapagos islands to check out all the unusual creatures. There would also be cake.
      – 500000000 x the money, I would open my own university called ‘Alextopia’.

    • Photo: Nadine Mirza

      Nadine Mirza answered on 5 Nov 2018:

      Like Alex said, totally depends on the amount of kaching we’re talking.
      2x or 3x – I’d like to hold even more cultural community events about dementia and also tie it in with talks for those caring for someone with dementia. Maybe even do some school outreach work, going in and talking to kids about it.
      10x – A series of workshops in the entire Greater Manchester area about dealing with dementia, for both the person and their carer, that keeps meeting and working with the people to make them comfortable. I
      100x – All of the above and I’d like to do a mini-project on working on a therapy known as cognitive stimulation which is good for people with dementia. I’d like to use the mini-project to see if I can deliver this therapy to South Asians as equally as everyone else and how to do this. I’d also LOVE to work on a book for South Asians that explains dementia in an easy way and mass produce it.
      1000x- All of the above and enough to take my mini-project and make it super big with way more participants so that its more recognised in science, the results are more reliable and I have enough money to then enforce it in hospitals and clinics.
      100,000x and more!- ALLLLLLLL of the above and I would go nuts funding people like Alzheimer’s Research UK to find a cure!!!

    • Photo: Warren Mansell

      Warren Mansell answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      I would do a study comparing two countries – one in which people in distress went for a diagnosis of a disorder and got treatment for that disorder, and one in which people in distress had immediate access someone who would listen to them for as long as they needed, asking questions to try to help them get to the root of the problem. I would then compare the impact on well-being in the two countries, and how much they spent on these two different ways of dealing with distress. I would predict that the country who listened would have better well being and it would cost them less.

    • Photo: Paul Matusz

      Paul Matusz answered on 11 Nov 2018:

      So the goal of my research right now is to use what we know about the mind and the brain and the tools of neuroimaging to better understand and improve people’s functioning in real environments. That is, my work is aimed at equalising learning opportunities to mostly healthy but disadvantaged children in normal schooling, as well as bringing back fundamental skills to those without them. So to me an important action that should be done (it is done to some extent at different universities and research centres in UK, like Cambridge or Oxford, etc.) is organising a long-term series of meetings with parents and other meetings with teachers (and doctors) – where we as scientists interested in helping developing brain discuss the problems that parents see and that teachers (and doctors) see and this way we design research on topics veyr close to their experience – and then we meet again and we discuss what we found and how to improve it further. i am part of the very first steps towards such initiatives here in Switzerland. So looking forward where this is gonna go!

Comments