Profile

I am a PhD student at The Open University which is based in Milton Keynes. I have a physics degree and a masters degree in Space Exploration Systems. I also worked as a physics teacher which I loved but I missed doing research! I have always been very sporty and I was a competitive athlete for many years but I gave it up and started playing Ultimate Frisbee a few years ago. It is so much fun and really hard work! If you don’t believe me, check youtube! I play tournaments and train (when I’m not injured) and I play all over the world!

I am helping a team to build a new device that will land on the Moon in a few years time. The device will try to get chemicals from the Moon rocks and soil. I get to build new equipment, work with real Moon soil and help to come up with new ideas. We are doing this work so that one day we can build a Moon base using supplies we find on the Moon.

As a researcher you also get to go to conferences all over the world where you can talk about your work, meet other people with similar interests, and share ideas!

I also was lucky enough to work as an intern at the Lunar and Planetary Institute this summer in Houston. We did a lot of work to support future lunar missions and we got to spend a lot of time at NASA!

Each day is different for me. I have lots of post-it notes with all the things I need to get done and I just pick which ones I should get done today. At the moment I am spending time researching similar experiments to give me tips and I keep a record of what I find. When I am tired of reading I work in the lab to help get the equipment ready for our tests. This is very hands on which I love. Other times I have to predict what our experiment will do which involves lots of calculations so I use programming to help me with this.