Profile

I’m an electronics engineer by training, although I do a large variety of work in my current role at the British Geological Survey, as well as designing and building electronic instrumentation, I build experimental setups for measuring the flow of fluids and gasses through rocks which is of interest to the radioactive waste industry as well as those involved in carbon capture and storage. I also am involved in ultrasonic testing, doing non-destructive testing (NDT) on a large variety of materials to help characterise them, such work is useful to anyone who wants to look inside something without having to physically open it up!

Currently I am working on a machine called a ‘Bond-Impact’ tester, which smashes rocks with large sledgehammers and measures various parameters about how much energy is required, this data is of interest to commercial quarrying companies who are looking to optimise their rock extraction and crushing operations. Typically for me, as well as design the electronics and write the software, I’ve had to get involved with the mechanical design of the rig itself, as well as design an experimental procedure, and interpret the results

I usually plan my weeks out in advance, I try to assign blocks of time to certain projects as it’s usually better to concentrate on one thing rather than spread your time through lots of little things!

My work is typically carried out in one of several laboratories, Fluid processes, Ultrasonics or Instrument Development, I also use my office computer a lot, writing software, designing circuits and laying out printed circuit boards, most days I’ll either be in a lab, building stuff or running tests, or at my desk writing software or designing stuff! I do spend quite a bit of time documenting my work, written outputs are extremely important, both for sharing science with the outside world, and also making sure everyone knows how your latest piece of kit works….

I try to arrange the important stuff for the morning as I find I’m much more effective earlier in the day! after lunch I find myself a little sluggish and where possible try to take care of administrative tasks instead of having to do stuff like complex maths or tricky electronics design! Of course this isn’t always possible, but I do try to keep it this way as I find it works most effectively for me.