My contract will soon end at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, working with some of the brightest minds who are making scientific discoveries for human health and disease. It’s been a wonderful experience for me to learn about their astonishing research, and especially how quickly new technology has advanced their work; the sequencing of genomes which once took years can now be done in a matter of hours thanks to the latest sequencing technology. And this time next year, it will be even faster.

I have been totally blown away by a “magic” pen used by the media team. I couldn’t resist buying one myself. It has been an invaluable tool for transcribing complex scientific notes after speaking to scientists because this “magic” pen – a Livescribe Pulse smartpen, is also a recorder with 2 GB memory which can record 200 hours of audio. You still write notes as usual, but on a special digital notepad, and these can be abbreviated. You only need to jot down a few words here and there to remind yourself of significant parts of the interview. When you want to play back the notes, you simply place the pen on the text which you want to play back. For example, I write down “quote”, and this reminds me where to return on the recording to play back the words I need for my press release. The notes can also be instantly saved on a computer.

It’s magic to me, and I plan to treat my student son David to one as I can see it will be a great help for his lectures too.