Darren Griffin

My guest this week is Darren Griffin, Professor of Genetics and Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Reproduction at the University of Kent. Darren works in the field of IVF and the human genome as well as, more recently, the genomic structure of dinosaurs.  He was born in Aldershot and grew up in Leeds and in this very insightful conversation Darren explains why he was an oddball in his family, having gone to university in 1985 and effectively never left. Darren explains why he enjoys undertaking media work as it reaches far more people than is possible through conventional scientific publications, and we talk about the best ways in which to handle media appearances, before moving on to discuss the climate change and science and religion debates, including why Richard Dawkins is in some respects very similar to the fundamentalist Christians that he is castigating.  Darren recalls growing up in the same village as Alan Bennett and, in terms of his earliest memories, he can remember the moon landings of the 1970s. He reveals that his original passion was History and we learn what it was that changed his mind. When growing up Darren was into glam rock, e.g. Slade and Wizzard, as well as Suzi Quatro and the post-punk era of The Jam and the Boomtown Rats. He explains how he can listen back with nostalgia to punk rock music now but that it wasn’t his ‘thing’ at the time. He also has a penchant for song lyrics. The conversation then turns to the various skills that characterize academics, and the concept of the absent minded professor, and how in academia we cultivate various transferable skills. Darren also explains why he thinks it is hard to plagiarize a PhD thesis and he reveals what the worst words are that anyone can say in a PhD viva! We learn what inspired Darren to enter academia and about the work he carried out early in his career in a cancer institute, in which looking at chromosomes down a microscope enabled him to see a very different side to the profession. Darren talks about why he likes doing things that you can talk to people about in the pub and about the need for research to have social relevance. His research into dinosaurs has been an obsession for a long time and we find out why. From here Darren talks about the particular branch of IVF with which he works, which is called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, and the ethical, legal and cultural implications of this work are explored. We find out why he is bringing his IVF work to pig embryos and how the results can feed back into the human IVF world. At university we learn that Darren was social secretary of the badminton club, and he reveals why back in the 1980s he didn’t want to engage with politics and why the best science can sometimes be undertaken in the bar at conferences. In the final part of the interview we learn why his memories are more positive around the time that he was in the sixth form, rather than earlier, and whether he has fulfilled the dreams he had from high school. We discover why working at the University of Kent suits him and whether Darren would consider himself to be a looking back or a looking forward type of person. Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Darren Griffin and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.