Profile

I grew up in southeastern Australia, and went to a university there to study both Science and Arts. Afterwards I did a years worth of new research which gave me a taste of doing brand new science. I then took a job as an exploration geologist (the people that find new places to mine minerals and metals) for a couple of years, which involved traveling all over Australia to places no-one ever goes. Sometimes we used helicopters and very small planes, and sometimes four wheel drives.

I then started my PhD in Sydney, Australia and lived near the beach! I was researching how volcanoes can tell us about how mountain belts work, and why they stop growing (one day even the Himalaya will stop).

While in Sydney I got married to another scientist and we had a baby who we love to take hiking with us!

Now my family and I have moved to the UK where I do research at the University of Leeds. The project I’m working on is using crystals that grow inside the volcano as mini stop-watches. This information is very important if we want to understand how fast things happen inside the volcano, and hopefully will help us know when eruptions will happen in the future.

It’s tricky to write about a typical day, because it really does depend on where I am.

When I am doing work at University, I take the train in to Leeds, walk through the city to my office (which I share with another two scientists) and read emails that have arrived overnight. I work with people in Australia and the Americas so I need to catch up on what they have done while I was sleeping! I normally spend time setting up experiments with rocks and minerals I have gathered. Then I run those experiments in special instruments that measure things like what chemistry the mineral has, which tells me all sorts of things about how the mineral was formed and when.

I also spend time writing about science that I want to do in the future (in a couple of years time) because every scientist needs to have a job arranged before they finish the job they are doing! These pieces of work are called proposals, and are sent to different groups of people and other scientists who decide if the idea is good enough to give money to make it happen.

When I am doing work in the great outdoors normally I wake up either in a motel or a tent (depending on where the rocks are)! I get out to the area I need to study either by four wheel drive or sometimes simply hiking. I use a gps and maps to make sure I know where I am! I take notes and make sketches of what I see, and take small samples using a hammer. These are labelled with where they came from and why the sample was taken. Often I have packed lunch to eat sitting on a rock and admiring the view. Sometimes if the weather is awful the view isn’t great, but its really nice to be outside on days like that as long as you have good waterproof gear and stay warm and dry!

Sometimes I go to conferences which are gatherings of scientists that are studying similar things.