Profile

I grew up in the North West of England in a town called Chorley, along with two younger brothers and a younger sister, and a whole bunch of pets…dogs, cats, rabbits and guinea pigs! I’m very close with my family and proud of where I’m from. When I was little we lived in the country side before moving closer to the towns, so I love going for walks or being outside when I can, even if it’s just walking along the canals in Birmingham.

This year I started going indoor climbing with a friend from work and really love it! We also go for a lot of coffee together and often have a pizza and a catch up before we go climbing. I’m really interested in arts as well, I’ve just started learning to crochet (I want to make myself a cardigan eventually!) but I enjoy drawing and visiting art galleries and museums too. Me and my partner also love Lego. I have most of the Lego space sets, including the Mars Curiosity rover and a spacecraft called Hayabusa, which I built myself from scratch as a summer project when I finished my undergraduate degree.

I love travelling and music, and even better when the two are combined and I get to travel to see a band; I’ve done this a few times now with my partner and we’ve been to many different countries in Europe. This year, I went on holiday outside of Europe for the first time ever, and embarked on a trip to Asia and Australia! My favourite places to travel to are cold places, I love the snow, and to places with cool geology and mountains. My favourite countries in Europe are all the ones in the Nordics (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland). They also have great coffee and bakeries there too…

When I’m in the lab I’m using equipment called an electron microscope. It’s like a normal light microscope except instead we use tiny particles called electrons to look at our samples. I use this to take images of my samples and to find out what they’re made of, by looking at how these particles interact with the meteorites. We also have a CT scanner, a bit like the ones they use in hospital to take X-rays of your whole body (the big donut shaped machines!) except ours is much smaller and isn’t round. Instead, we keep the X-ray source still and spin the sample around. By doing this, I create 3D videos of my meteorites and can use the images to see what’s inside, without cutting it open!

Mostly I use the electron microscopes to find out two things about my samples – what they’re made of and what the structure is. By looking at which elements make up a particular region, I can decide what mineral it is. Then, to confirm this finding (because some minerals have very similar mixtures of elements) I have to take very zoomed in images to look at how the elements are joined together, we call this the crystal structure. I can take measurements of these distances, which can be used to tell different minerals apart.

At the moment I’m doing a lot of writing, one of the important things in science is to publish what you find. So, I’m busy writing a scientific paper, as well as my thesis, which is the big document you have to submit at the end of your PhD. I use code (Python) to make a lot of my plots, this is something I’m continuing to learn throughout my PhD as I learn which bits of code I need to make what I need or to help me analyse my data.

I like to make sure I have a decent lunch break, especially if the weather is nice, because I spend a lot of my time looking at screens. It’s also nice to spend an hour chatting with everyone else about work or their plans.

Once I get back home from work, I have a cup of tea and I have tea (or dinner, depending where you’re from!) with my partner. Sometimes we’ll go on a quick walk along the canal or we’ll watch some TV together, if it’s sport we watch cricket or we also like to watch comedy, like The Office, or The Great British Bake Off when it’s on! I also like to spend time doing arty things, which at the minute is crochet, but I also like cross-stitching and drawing. If we have a holiday coming up, I spend some time looking at different things to do whilst we’re there.