Profile

After leaving school I moved to Durham University to study for a Masters in Physics. At Durham I specialised in solar cells, but I also did a project on dolphin echolocation, and following that I was lucky enough to travel to Africa to work with the Namibian Dolphin Project. I collected data on wild whales and dolphins to help protect them! Although I then decided to take a break from science, working in London as a consultant. But after two years I returned and now live in Bath, where I am working towards my PhD investigating materials for solar cells.

I also love to dance, starting ballet when I was just three years old and competing in national dance competitions (although now I just do dance classes for fun!).

The Earth receives more energy from the Sun in just one hour than the entire world’s population consumes in one year! That is a lot of potential energy! What if we could capture that sunlight and turn it’s energy into electricity? Well we can using solar cells.

Most people have seen solar panels, but I work on materials for the solar cells of the future. These devices can be made to be thinner than a human hair and flexible! They can also be printed (think solar cell wall paper), they can also be transparent (think solar cell windows).

But the materials that capture the sunlight are not very well understood, and that is where I come in. I use Lasers and X-rays to look deep into the structure of these materials to try and figure out how they work, and in doing so how to make them better for use in solar cells.

The great thing about being a scientist is that no two days are the same!

At the moment I am doing a lot of measurements involving lasers. So recently, my day starts quite early with a coffee (otherwise I’m grumpy!) and then I go to the laser lab to set up my experiment. This involves quite a bit of liquid nitrogen and then cooling a sample using liquid helium. I cool my materials down to -270 degrees C, colder than the surface of Neptune! This takes a long time, so while I’m waiting, I go on my computer answering emails and look up work other scientists have done that might help me. After lunch I come back to the lab and turn the laser on. I analyse the reflected laser light which can reveal interesting properties in my material. Then finishing the day with a dance lesson is always great fun.

But sometimes my day involves making materials in a Chemistry lab or using an X-ray machine or being lucky enough to go out to schools and talk about science!