Harriet Dickinson is currently studying for a biosciences PhD at the University of Cambridge having done her undergraduate degree at Oxford. She specialises in infectious diseases (especially the scary ones), and spends most of her time in the lab pipetting. When she does manage finally to escape the lab, she vents her scientific frustrations as the captain of the "cutthroats" – a Cambridge University ladies’ fencing team - and also by doing taekwondo.