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So how did I become a Neuroscientist? Growing up in Libourne, France, all subjects at school were compulsory which meant I had no choice but to do Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, History, Geography, French Literature, Spanish and German. When my family and I moved to New Zealand in 2008, I joined school for Year 12 and I couldn’t believe that I could firstly choose subjects and secondly only choose five! So, I satisfied my hunger for Mathematics selecting Calculus and Statistics, threw in some Chemistry and English to keep things a little more diverse and couldn’t resist the opportunity of studying Horticulture, my until-then secret hobby! Finishing school, I knew I wanted to go and study at university because if I’m honest, I enjoyed studying, but having to decide what to study after such a structured French schooling was challenging. Mathematics was a must, no doubt about that, but what would I do with my degree in Mathematics my parents asked me? With no clear answer in my mind, my parents advised me to pair Mathematics with something so I could keep my options open. Something sciencey was what appealed to me, but with the university enrollment deadline approaching, I found myself flicking through the Faculty of Science brochure reading about the possible majors that I could pair with Applied Mathematics and that is when Pharmacology caught my attention. I didn’t know much about it but studying about how drugs affect the body sounded interesting so off I A marriage of numbers by Amy McCaughey-Chapman 2014 – 2017 W&B Miller Postgraduate Scholarship 2018-2020 Neurological Foundation Small project grant embarked on my three-year Bachelor of Science (BSc) at the University of Auckland with a double major in Applied Mathematics and Pharmacology. During my first year, I had one introductory lecture which was delivered by Distinguished Professor Richard Faull. I vividly remember him standing at the front of the lecture theatre holding something in his hands and all he said was: “This is a human brain!”. That was it, my life changed at that moment as although Mathematics remained exciting and exhilarating, I then knew that the brain was what I needed to pursue. Upon completing my BSc I enrolled in 2013 into the BSC Honours program to pursue Neuroscience. I joined Professor Bronwen Connor’s laboratory and undertook a research project in the field of cell transplantation therapy for Parkinson’s disease. This was my first exposure to cell reprogramming and I was fascinated at the fact that Bronwen and her group could directly convert (direct reprogramming) adult human skin cells into immature brain cells, called neural precursor cells, using at the time cDNA of key transcription factors expressed during human brain development. For my honours project, I looked at the ability of our directly reprogrammed human neural precursor cells to survive transplantation into an animal model of Parkinson’s disease. This project was funded by the Neurological Foundation. I not only learnt a lot more about neuroscience during my Honours year, I discovered that cell reprogramming was the field I wanted to work further in and that I wanted Science wasn’t my number one passion when I was growing up, my family isn’t particularly scientific and I didn’t plan on becoming a scientist necessarily, I loved Mathematics!