Maike Haensel and Salina Nicoleau

Object one: Heart model

 SN I work on a disease called Chronic Thromboembolic Hypertension, which is basically a lung disease caused by blood clots occluding the arteries in your lungs. I'm looking at changes in the arterial geometry - the diameter of the arteries - and how that affects blood flow, which in turn affects the cells lining the vessels. The function of the endothelial cells lining your arteries is very important - when they become dysfunctional, this can lead to an increased risk of blood clots forming.

MH I work in the same area as Salina, but I'm interested in looking at how different diseases communicate with each other. Pulmonary hypertension is a common cause of other lung diseases, but we don't really know what the link is. We are using what we call organ-on-chip devices, which are basically chips where you can have two layers of channels separated by a porous membrane. You can add different cell types into the channels and then look at how they communicate with each other. I am also looking at external factors like pollution or smoking to see how this affects the cell types and disease model. My aim is to establish a model where you can look at cell to cell communication.

Object two: Microphone

 MH Our podcast – Elevat(Her) - started during lockdown. I was in Germany and Salina was in France, and we got to know each other over Microsoft Teams. We were sharing ideas and stories about our past and realised that we’d both had setbacks and been disheartened, and thought it would be nice to talk about it so other women don't have to go through the same thing alone.

SN The idea behind it was we felt there was a lack of visible female role models in society. We wanted to make sure that people would see us and realise they can also chase their dreams. We can all raise our voices, we can all be what we want. I think you can achieve whatever you want, if you put your mind to it. Of course, there are many barriers, but we wanted to address this – the barriers are there, but we can do something about it.

MN Basically our goal is to empower our listeners to achieve their full potential and elevate their life. We try to do this by highlighting different positive female role models.

SN In terms of which of our guests has really impacted me, I remember feeling a lot of emotions when we were recording Rosie Russell. She is a lab safety manager and she is a transgender woman. Her story was just breathtaking and so inspirational. She has been through a lot of challenges and is an example of how strong you need to be sometimes to get to where you want to be.

MH Someone who left an impact on me who was one of our first guests - Dr Alyson McGregor. Her research is on the effects that sex and gender have on emergent conditions, and why medicine often has dangerous side effects for women as this is not always taken into consideration in research. That opened my eyes. Since then, I've been trying to also implement looking at sex differences in my research.

Object three: Globe

 SN I am French – three quarters French, and a quarter Japanese - I was born in Paris but raised in the suburbs. I've always been brought up in a very international environment, speaking several languages since I was a kid. I feel like it's really forged who I am, in terms of being open minded and accepting other cultures. I used to go back to Japan quite a lot during summers and experience school there. And the Japanese aspect has painted me in a way, it's part of my personality. I'm very happy that my mum passed on that culture. I wouldn't be the person I am now without it. I'm glad that I can share my Japanese culture with people who have never been there – it’s very humbling to be able to share that richness.

MN I'm from the south of Germany, near Lake Constance and the Alps. Growing up there we were outdoors a lot and enjoying nature. My town is small so you can cycle everywhere or play in the street. That's why I felt the need to get out and explore the world. I lived in New Zealand for a year and I lived in Norway during my studies. And then now the UK, so I've always been super interested in exploring different cultures and countries. And I can't wait now that COVID is having less of an impact to travel again. I feel grateful I was able to have all these experiences up to now.