
Camilla Pang: How can science guide my life?
Bioinformatician Camilla Pang discusses how her neurodiversity has affected the way she works.
Dr Camilla Pang is a bioinformatician, who was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when she was eight years old.
Her first book, Explaining Humans (£14.99, Viking), is a guide to navigating life, love and relationships using the lessons she’s learned in her scientific career so far.
In it she draws on examples from how the different proteins in the human body can reflect the different roles in a social group, to the way how light refracts through a prism helping her to break down fear into something manageable.
Explaining Humans won the 2020 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize.
In this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, she discusses her current work using disease and cancer data, along with machine learning methods, to find patterns that can be used in healthcare and lead to the development of therapies.
She also explains how her neurodiversity has affected the way she works.
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Authors

Amy is the Editorial Assistant at BBC Science Focus. Her BA degree specialised in science publishing and she has been working as a journalist since graduating in 2018. In 2020, Amy was named Editorial Assistant of the Year by the British Society of Magazine Editors. She looks after all things books, culture and media. Her interests range from natural history and wildlife, to women in STEM and accessibility tech.
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