Dr Camilla Pang is a bioinformatician, who was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when she was eight years old.
Her first book, Explaining Humans (£14.99, Viking), is a guide to navigating life, love and relationships using the lessons she’s learned in her scientific career so far.
In it she draws on examples from how the different proteins in the human body can reflect the different roles in a social group, to the way how light refracts through a prism helping her to break down fear into something manageable.
Explaining Humanswon the 2020 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize.
In this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, she discusses her current work using disease and cancer data, along with machine learning methods, to find patterns that can be used in healthcare and lead to the development of therapies.
She also explains how her neurodiversity has affected the way she works.
If you have a burning science question you want an expert to answer, send them to us on twitter at@sciencefocus, and we may answer them in a future episode.
Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Listen to more episodes of theScience Focus Podcast:
- Jim Al-Khalili: Why AI is not the enemy
- What we got wrong about pandas and teenagers
- Jim Davies: How do you use your imagination?
- Dean Burnett: What’s going on in the teenage brain?
- Dr Guy Leschziner: What is your brain doing while you sleep?
- Nathan Lents: Everything that's wrong with the human body
