Snow in June, full house in July

Name: Tara Moore

Age: 33

Job: Lecturer in immunology, Ulster University, Coleraine.

Salary: I do it for the love of it, but £30K+ keeps me in Noa Noa clothes and Issey Miyake perfume.

Background: It all started with mucking out stables on the farm. Then Queen's University, Belfast, for a first-class BSc honours in microbiology in 1994, a PhD in immunology and virology in 1997 and postdoctoral research fellowships at Belfast, Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and Harvard Medical School. I returned to Northern Ireland to marry and take up a lectureship in 2002. My husband and I established a research group developing tests for dry eye syndrome and Herpes simplex keratitis .

Working conditions: My e-learning activities can be done anywhere, but I tend to work late nights. I do my research on campus.

Number of students you teach/staff you work with: The School of Biomedical Sciences consists of 76 academic staff. The immunology module on our distance-learning masters has up to 250 students.

Biggest challenge this year: My husband's narcolepsy... But, seriously, work is full of variety and new challenges. Last July brought the highlight week of my life with a National Teaching Fellowship, a research grant award and the birth of our daughter Luca. I now have three children under the age of four.

How you solved it: The narcolepsy? I have given up trying. My husband points out my lack of sense of direction so it's a no-win situation.

Worst moment in university life: The terror of my first lecture.

What is your working space like? Our research institute is the most impressive I have ever seen. I remember visiting Harvard before the research fellowship. The group leader introduced me to pioneering scientists including Judah Folkman. He even showed me Folkman's laboratory and pretended it was his. When I arrived, he showed me his real lab. It was smaller than my first student bedroom - but I needed to fit a dozen researchers into it.

Best excuse for bad behaviour: An assignment was late due to a severe snowstorm... in June in Northern Ireland.

Do you interact much with other parts of the university? As course director for two distance-learning programmes, I work with our virtual campus, the Institute of Postgraduate Medicine and Primary Care and many other departments.