Profile

I build kit for particle physics experiments and teach math and physics to university students. I work with my trade union to help people at work and stand up to bullying. I live in Oxford, England, but love to travel and make friends around the world. I am an award winning writer of My Little Pony fan fiction.

I have worked on many different science projects. Following a PhD in astroparticle physics working on an underground dark matter search, I spent a year at the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy. I then joined a particle physics experiment taking a precise measurement of the shape of the neutron at a nuclear reactor in Grenoble.

Getting distracted by geophysics, I carried out geomagnetic measurements in the dark tunnels of the Rustrel laboratory in France, and the Boulby Underground Laboratory in England. I have also worked at the Fermilab particle accelerator in the USA. My current job is upgrading a detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

I also running activities to promote particle physics at events like the Oxfordshire Science Festival and Stargazing Oxford, and giving talks to groups such as schools and astronomy clubs.

There is no such thing as a ‘typical day’ for me. To describe two days:

One day, I am on a research trip at an underground laboratory. This involves getting up early, dressing in warm jacket, hard hat, and head torch, and walking two kilometres down dark underground tunnels to set up an experiment to monitor the magnetic field and the flow of water dripping through the rocks. We come out for lunch, and eat outside, sitting in the sunshine.

On a quieter day, I might spend the morning writing computer programs in my office, have lunch with friends, attend a seminar to listen to someone talk about the latest exciting research they have done, then meet some students to discuss their projects.