Hello everybody - I joined the NLO last year after going to the astrofair - the imaging tent definitely caught my attention. I'm a newbie to astronomy, starting in May last year and committed at that stage to a decent quality visual set-up, and have thoroughly enjoyed this. I retired in March this year, having worked in major pharmaceutical and Biotech companies in the UK & abroad since 1983 - all throughout this I have focussed on building up my career in Cancer Research, and especially the discovery of new targeted agents and taking these into the clinic for evaluation in patients. My last position just before I retired was Global Head of Oncology Research for a major pharmaceutical company where I was responsible for research labs in Belgium, France & USA. By training (PhD and post-doc) I'm a molecular biologist, and specialized in the cloning and molecular manipulation of cancer genes - I then moved into cancer drug discovery.

Much of my time has been spent looking down a microscope eyepiece at the micro-level of structure and life and subversion in cancer - so it was a natural progression to move onwards to a telescope eyepiece and look now at the macro-level of life and order. I guess this is how I will now spend a large part of my time now. As I mentioned though, I'm new to astronomy so have a huge amount to learn. I'm grateful though to the folks at the NLO for their warm welcome and openess to talk about kits and set-ups on the Friday nights that I have been down there. I live near Cullompton in the peace & quiet of the countryside and am fortunate to have a reasonable dark site for observing.

Regards,
Martin