Profile

I live just south of Oxford with my girlfriend and our cat, Lettie – usually called Little Lettuce as she’s so tiny despite being 7 years old. I love playing PC games and have built my own computers since I was 15. I also enjoy having big groups of friends over to play “serious” board games that last for hours, as well as playing the card game Magic the Gathering, which I’ve collected for about 4 years. I love food and cooking, my favourite food is Indian – the spicier the better! My favourite movie of all time is The Matrix and my favourite book is Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke.

Below is a photo of the sun I took with the international space station crossing its face.

The ISIS neutron and muon source is a national facility based on a large research campus just south of Oxford. We have a proton synchrotron, which is a circular particle accelerator (like a mini CERN!) which accelerates protons to 84% of the speed of light before smashing them into a brick of tungsten metal, which causes a bright flash of neutrons. Everything happens so quickly, it does this 50 times per second. We can then use these neutrons to investigate all kinds of different materials.

Interior views of ISIS

My job involves helping visiting scientists to prepare their samples and put them in our neutron beam as well as making my own samples and doing my own experiments. People come from all over the world to use our facility and they research almost anything you can think of, from new drugs, to solar energy and batteries, as well as materials for hydrogen storage or new alloys for engineering.

I wake up around 8, a little later than some people because I prefer to stay up later, and head in to work.

If I am doing a neutron experiment that day I will go to the experiment hall and either meet some new visiting scientists to help them prepare a sample to measure or prepare my own sample, which usually involves putting the sample in a special aluminium can. I’ll then insert the sample into a special refrigerator that cools it down VERY cold, only around 5 degrees above absolute zero, and then switch on the neutron beam and start counting neutrons. I might change samples two or three times per day, which sometimes means I have to come back late at night because the neutron beam runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

On days where I am not running a neutron experiment I spend time in my office. Here I have a computer that I use to analyse the results of my experiments and to help our visitors to analyse their results.