Sarah works at the Patrick Wild Centre with our institute. The Centre aims to better understand genetic conditions affecting brain development, and to improve the care and treatment of people with these conditions. We chatted to Sarah about working with affected families, liaising with partners and being very organised! What’s a typical day like for you? Lots of organising, emailing and talking to people! Most of my time is spent on public engagement and patient and public involvement in our research. I also liaise between researchers, drug companies, the clinical research facility to organise research studies and make sure they happen. And I look after our website, social media and newsletters too. What kind of thing do you do in patient and public involvement and public engagement? I run working groups with families affected by the genetic conditions SYNGAP1 and Fragile X. We meet twice a year with each group online to discuss research priorities, give them updates and get their feedback on what we’re doing. Then we see each other in person at our annual family days, which I also organise. We ask the families what they want to hear about, then design the day around their needs and interests. What’s your favourite part of the job? Definitely talking to the families. Chatting to them about what their research priorities are. Learning about what kind of difficulties they have, what they would like to see happen, and what they would like our research achieve. How did you get here? I trained as a nurse and then went to work for the Scottish Mental Health Research Network as a research nurse, doing the nursing aspect of their research studies. In that role I worked a lot with the Patrick Wild Centre on their studies in people with intellectual disabilities, and I really enjoyed it. So, when the opportunity came up to work directly for the Patrick Wild Centre, I was really keen to do that.Now I’m not doing any nursing, but I work closely with our research nurses to make sure they have what they need. I find my nursing background is really useful for doing that well. What’s your proudest moment in your career so far? I did my nursing masters while I was pregnant and took my baby daughter to my graduation. Who would your dream collaborator be? I think we have a great team now, but my children would love me to collaborate with Dr Chris and Dr Xand from TV’s Operation Ouch! This article was published on 2026-03-06
