I guess you could consider my lab as a bit of a scratch and sniff experience. You have to experience it all at once. To get the full perception of what maggots can do, you need to see them feeding, you need to smell them, and that's how I would like people to know my lab and to see the beauty of what I do.

I'm Michelle Harvey. I'm a professor of Medical Entomology and I'm the Associate Dean teaching and learning for the Faculty of Science, engineering and Built Environment at Deakin. 

I love working after dark, coming on campus at night and being able to check on my flies. When everything is quiet, most other people are asleep, and I'm sitting here counting out maggots.

I find it incredibly peaceful. My research is all about understanding the humble blow fly. They can help us to estimate how long someone's been dead. They can be used to help clean out wounds in a hospital setting. It's about how we can work with them, perhaps to control their numbers, but also to harness the good things they can do for us.

Maggots are great because they start the biological clock after a person dies. So as soon as a person dies, your body starts to emit odours. The flies will come in and they will lay eggs around your orifices. Around your eyes, your nose, your mouth, your ears, and then these will hatch to be maggots. They don't munch down on flesh.

Instead they use bacteria to break down your tissues into a soup. So when they drink that soup up, they continue to feed. They get bigger, and we work out how old the maggots are based on their size, and this helps us to estimate how long a person has been dead. The maggots never stop. They're always feeding, so I guess I call it the blowfly bunker or the fly hotel.

I had one class on forensic entomology in my final year, and I just was fascinated by the fact that I might be able to do something really good for society. Using bugs. It was just such a unique area. There were maybe two people in Australia doing it at the time. I'd never seen a dead body. I didn't know how I would handle that.

My first case was a child. I thought this would be a very confronting situation, although it turned out to be probably the most reinforcing experience of my career. That was the real realisation that I could use objective science. 

You stop thinking about the human angle for a minute. You interpret the science that's in front of you.

But ultimately knowing at the end of the day that what you did was something that might contribute to peace of mind for the family of the victim. And to do that, just based on the humble maggot, was something so powerful. And I've never looked back. I love being on campus in the evenings. I find it incredibly peaceful.

There are no distractions. There are no phone calls, and no emails. I get to be sitting here with the one thing that I love the most in a quiet campus, and it really helped to reinforce the work that you're doing and your passion for it. And to think about what comes next, what are the next big questions?

So those quiet moments that I have on campus on my own at night, I love.