Dr Emma Yhnell

Tis the season… well almost anyway! With less than a week to go until the big day your Christmas plans might still be very much up in the air. But, the big question still remains; what do you buy the person who has everything: your annoyingly perfect older brother? Many companies are now marketing commercial…

Yes, that’s right, it is nearly Halloween! It looks like there won’t be any trick or treating this year. But that’s ok, because I’m still recovering from the fact that I was never allowed to go trick or treating as a kid! Last week, as I was walking around my local supermarket eyeing up all…

“What’s it like to be a triplet?”, a question I’m often asked. After all, siblings and families are often topics that come up in polite conversation and people are often shocked when I say “I’m actually one of triplets.” To many people this seems like a complete and utter revelation, there are gasps, shocked faces…

Publications are often seen as the ‘bread and butter’ of academic life. Personally, I think that there is a lot more to academic life than publishing research, but nonetheless, I was delighted to find out that the results of my most recent study had been accepted for publication in Pilot and Feasibility Studies. For a…

Publishing academic research is often seen as the ‘bread and butter’ of academic life. Many academics are judged on their research output by the articles that they publish and the journals that they publish their work in. In this post, by articles I mean research articles which are original pieces of research and by journals…

The rise in the availability and accessibility of ‘Commercial Genetic testing’ (genetic tests offered by commercial organisations that are often completed at home and then sent back to the company) has sparked a lot of debate recently. After reading a BBC New Story – Genetic tests: Experts urge caution over home testing. I wanted to…

It can be all too easy to accidentally miss emails and in June of last year I nearly missed quite an important one! DK (formerly known as Dorling Kindersley) emailed me to invite me to contribute to a new book they were writing, it was called ‘How The Brain Works’. I don’t make any secret…

I have worked in Huntington’s disease research for many years, so I followed with interest and a certain amount of apprehension the news in November 2019 that a woman who had inherited Huntington’s disease was suing the NHS. The story was reported widely across the media including the BBC, the original news article is available…

By now  I think we have all established that I love to chat! As a scientist I have spoken about my research at a number of different events, to a range of different audiences. I will talk about science and research with anyone and anywhere! I was lucky to be invited to a recent event…

I grew up in Gloucestershire, but I am ashamed to admit that despite this, I had never been to Cheltenham Science Festival (I know, it makes me cringe just saying this!). Winning the FameLab Welsh National Final meant that I received an invite to take part in the UK Final of the competition, which nicely coincided with…