Georgina Ferry interviews Henry Chan, DPhil Student, 26 April 2022.
Topics discussed include (00:00:20) DPhil studies at the Synthesis for Biology and Medicine Centre for Doctoral Training [within the Department of Chemistry] and supervision under Professor's Fernanda Duarte and Chris Schofield; (00:00:53) early education in Hong Kong and interest in chemistry, awareness of the SARS outbreak in 2003 as a child; (00:01:51) undergraduate and DPhil studies at Oxford, MChem project working with Professor Schofield; (00:02:43) first awareness of COVID-19, Christmas holiday in Hong Kong, travel to Berlin for computational chemistry workshop in February 2020 and national lockdown in March 2020; (00:04:06) DPhil projects undertaken at the time, including computational modelling and introduction to the work on COVID-19 [with Professor Duarte and colleagues] using computational modelling to look at the activity mechanisms and binding of inhibitors to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus main protease; (00:05:29) work with other graduate students on the project, including Tika Malla, collaboration with Professor Garrett Morris's group and University of Bristol graduates; (00:07:58) Wednesday meetings, sharing of ideas, results and expertise; (00:08:57) computational projects relating to Mpro [main protease]; (00:10:50) compounds investigated relating to protease inhibition; (00:13:41) changes made to DPhil as a result of COVID research; (00:15:55) the student experience of the pandemic, lone working, supervision and living arrangements; (00:18:02) current focus of work, particularly relating to Mpro and PLpro [papain-like protease]; (00:19:53) personal wellbeing during the pandemic, working from home and empathising with others; (00:21:10) collaboration and the sharing of ideas and expertise in the scientific field.
