We were honoured that Dr Elizabeth Sutton- Class of 2013 agreed to be our guest speaker at Prize Giving.   For those who were fortunate to be present at either of our Prize Giving services you will have heard her speak and were no doubt impressed with her career history but also her understated humility.  Staff and parental feedback was equally impressive with many comments on how her words both inspired Queen's students but was so very relevant to all.

Please find her speech. 

Queen's Speech Good morning/afternoon, my name is Elizabeth Sutton, and I attended Queen's between 2007 to 2013, which honestly doesn't feel that long ago. I am incredibly excited and honoured to come here and speak with you today especially considering I never thought I would be doing anything interesting enough to share with others! I guess I should quickly bring you up to speed with what I am working on currently, and how I got there. I'll try to make this short and sweet. 

I studied Biology, Chemistry and Maths for my A Levels. I'll be completely honest, I knew I wanted to go into science and help people one way or another, and initially I applied to study medicine at university. I was successful in gaining several interviews, however I was ultimately unsuccessful in gaining a place at university for that degree, so I went with my second choice, which was Biological Sciences at the University of Leicester. This course opened my eyes to just how wide the field of 'science' actually was. This course offered everything from zoology and studying animals, to microbiology and genetics. I however went down the physiology with pharmacology route, so the biology was more related to the human body.

 From there, I'll be honest, I still didn't know what I wanted to do in any extreme detail, but I knew I wanted to continue with science and investigate the 'how's' and 'why's' our bodies can do what they do. After all, if we can solve the 'how's' and 'whys', particularly in the cases of disease or even the process of ageing, then we can step in and make a difference for people to longer and healthier lives, not to mention the cost impact upon the NHS and wider healthcare. 

So I went to do a master's degree at The University of Liverpool. It was here that I was able to properly get stuck into experiments within a lab. As the master's was coming to an end, I decided that yes, research was what I wanted to do, and so I applied for a PhD. For this I added a new factor into 'how and why' something happens, and that was 'when'. I was researching circadian biology, you may have heard this being called the body clock, this controls when you get hungry, when you wake up in the morning, when you get tired at night, and importantly, it can affect whether a drug given to treat an illness is at its most effective or least effective. These are just a few examples. I won't bore you with any further details here, but feel free to come and chat with me later. And thanks to this project, I finally became the Doctor I wanted to be, just via a slightly different but incredibly satisfying path than the one I had initially thought! So never give up as other doors open if your plan A doesn't work out. 

 Now onto the big one. Simply put, I am a space biologist. So what does this really mean? I'm working on a project called MicroAge 2 at The University of Liverpool, in collaboration with the UK Space Agency, the European Space Agency and ultimately, NASA. With age, our muscles undergo a loss of mass and strength, leading to frailty, which comes with many great risks, similarly astronauts in microgravity also display this reduction but at a more rapid rate, losing up to 30% of mass within weeks. In my project we are aiming to use the microgravity environment as a model of rapid skeletal muscle ageing. I'm growing human skeletal muscle which will be stretched to put them under tension, to see how the powerhouse component of our cells, the mitochondria, respond to this type of stress. We're going to compare these ground-experiments against similar sorts of experiment in space, to see the difference. And then next summer, my team and I will be flying out to the NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, where we will be based in the NASA labs for several months to grow these muscles, package them up and hand them over to the astronauts to fly to the International Space Station, for the experiments to take place. This is an incredible opportunity, and I am enjoying every moment! 

Although this work is very specialist, it can be very demanding, it also comes with its own rewards as I have been lucky enough to present at several national and international conferences, my favourite was a lovely little Greek island called Spetses, where I was awarded the young scientist award. As a lab group we have also volunteered several times at the BlueDot Science and Music festival at Jodrell Bank where we had a stall with activities all about our research, such as test you grip strength and balance games. Unfortunately for us, the festival was cancelled this year due to the unusually enormous volumes of rain that fell the previous year, where yes, we were volunteering and camping, and yes, being 'stuck-in-the-mud' became a very literal thing, with the liquid mud going all the way up to our shins! Now this was something that Queen's had very much prepared me for, through the D of E programme! I went all the way from Bronze to Gold and on every single day, through the hiking and camping, it rained, so I was very ready to tackle the muddy festival! 

 Queen's shaped me to become a very well-rounded individual, I enjoyed classes, Biology was a particular favourite thanks to the enthusiastic Mrs Dillamore, who encouraged me to pursue this subject as she knew I could be a promising scientist, and boy was she right! I took singing lessons and was part of several of the school's musicals, My Fair Lady and Hairspray, and let me tell you, being a quiet and introverted person, stepping onto that stage in front of so many people was terrifying, though Queen's made it such a safe environment which enabled me to try and push myself to be my best. Take all the opportunities Queen's offers you; you will look back on experiences and really appreciate the safe space provided.

 I was also part of several of the sports teams, though my favourite sport, possibly due to a light bit of family indoctrination, was and still is netball. During the time I was at Queen's netball was not the primary winter sport, with most attention going to hockey and lacrosse as both PE teachers, Miss Littler and Mrs Moore, were incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about those sports and I played both, being part of the school lacrosse team, however netball was just a PE lesson for a few weeks. I was fortunate enough to be a member of Chester netball club and was very well trained and well versed in the sport, I therefore decided to bring some of that netball experience to Queen's, and with the support both PE teachers, I decided to become a qualified netball coach and umpire to essentially establish a permanent netball club at the school. And it proved to be a successful gambit! Some of the teams I coached went on to win the Chester and District competitions, and in fact, I was very proud to hear that the netball club is still thriving! Now that was the start of me pushing myself out of my comfort zone which led to me being awarded the first ever Governor's prize for Leadership. Having the support of Miss Littler and Mrs Moore for this was vital as they enabled me to empower myself and have the confidence to see my plan through. 

So, ladies, if you have something you would like to achieve, have belief and confidence in yourself and know that the school will support you in any way they can! One fond memory I have of Queen's is with the diaries we were given at the start of each year. I don't know if you all still have these diaries, however, through them we were encouraged to actively participate in organising and planning our schedules, homework, timetables etc. Learning this sort of planning from a young age served me well when moving to university and undertaking my undergraduate degree, where you had no choice but to organise your time to make all the lectures and various sports events. In fact, my sister and I both liked the layout of the Queen's diaries so much that we always purchased academic diaries once we left Queen's, however at the time these didn't come close to the Queen's diary. Although my diary has now become electronic, the planning and organisation skills I learnt with the Queen's diary has been vitally important, particularly when it comes to planning experiments and optimising my time in the lab. I have forever been grateful to Queen's for providing me with a safe environment to grow and flourish in the school, but also for gifting me with key skills to take forward in the big wide world.

 One of the most vital things I learnt at Queen's was the importance of communication and speaking up rather than sitting silently. Admittedly as a quiet and introverted person, this is a skill I did originally struggle at, though I always tried to push myself through the school shows and the coaching, in fact, I still struggle with it at times and it's something I am always actively working on, and am slowly improving at as not even a few years ago would I have been comfortable in standing up in front of you all by myself and talk. 

So ladies, if there is just one thing you take away from my speech, please let it be this, take the opportunity of a friendly Queen's environment to speak up and ask those questions, there is no such thing as a silly question, engage in debates, offer up opinions, don't be afraid, build that confidence! This has helped me develop so much and enabled me to get to the position I am in today and I'm not finished yet! So I guess in summary what I would like to say is that it's okay not to know what you want to do. Find an area that you really enjoy, take things step by step and grasp any opportunities that come with both hands! Sometimes things won't work out the first time, so pick yourselves up and go again, as cliché as it sounds, another door will be open for you somewhere! Take the opportunity at Queen's to build that confidence and your lifelong friendships! And finally, women belong in every avenue of work and life, if you are told there isn't room, be prepared to grit your teeth, straighten your spine and make some! Thank you for having me.