As a research scientist at the Krembil Brain Institute and a Canada Research Chair in Acute and Chronic Pain Research, Karen Davis studies the brain and pain. She and her research team are working to determine how pain is represented in the brain as well as identifying how pain can be managed.
Research for a better Canada - Karen Davis - Transcript
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[Interview with Karen Davis]
[Text on screen: Karen Davis. Senior scientist at the Krembil Brain Institute]
Hi, my name is Karen Davis. I’m a senior scientist at the Krembil Brain Institute. I study pain and the brain. What captured my interest initially was that somehow you might be able to control dealing with pain in a period of time, on your own, through what’s in your brain. And it was also fascinating to me that everybody experiences pain differently. Those are the things that kind of really motivated me to try to understand, you know, why we have this issue. I love being a scientist for a variety of reasons. One is I get to read about, think about and do things about stuff that’s really fun and that I enjoy. And I often give the analogy that being a scientist is like playing academic baseball. If you’re a hitter, if you succeed only 30% of the time, you’re a superstar. If you have a batting average of 300, you’re like a superstar. It means you failed 70% of the time. And it’s kind of like that in science. You can fail a lot and still be a superstar and still make a huge contribution to science, so it’s really a joy to work in this kind of field that allows for that sort of discovery.
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"I love being a scientist for a variety of reasons…I get to read about, think about and do things about stuff that is really fun and that I enjoy."