I went to school in Ireland, so did English, Irish, Maths, German, Music, Physics, Chemistry and Applied Maths at Leaving Cert.

Then I did a BSc in Physics and Music at Cardiff University.

I graduated from University and was temping in various office jobs for a while. Each week I’d get a copy of New Scientist and look through the job ads and apply for those that looked interesting and I thought I could do.

RAL gave me my first interview and my first job offer. I spent 9 years working for the Radio Communications Research Unit, and then I moved to the British Atmospheric Data Centre last year. Both groups are in the Space Science Department at RAL, so I didn’t even need to move offices.

I did my PhD working part time, while working for the RCRU and was funded to do it thanks to RAL’s excellent training and development programme.

I could have done the traditional PhD – postdoc route to get to this job. Or, as there’s a lot of management involved, going into industry after my first degree would have worked too.

I like being a scientist and finding out new and interesting things about the world. Working as part of an international project team means that I get to travel, and I’ve been to conferences at some pretty exotic places (New Delhi, Seoul...) My colleagues aren’t just the people in the same group as me – often I’ll be working very closely with people who are employed by a different organisation to me.

I don’t manage people in the traditional line management sense, but as a project manager I have to manage a lot of people to make sure the project work gets done.

Don’t be scared of physics and maths. Yes, they’ve got the reputation for being difficult, but they’re fascinating too, once you dig down past the basic stuff.

Don’t think that you have to go to university straight away, and get a first to become a research scientist. I know plenty of people who took a break before doing their first degree, or started work and did their degree part time who now have careers in science. The same thing goes for a post graduate degree – if you don’t get a 2:1 or a first, you still can do a PhD (though you may have to be a bit more flexible and lucky!)

I’m a creative person – I like making things. I knit, bake and sew and I make things out of other things (like a wind chime out of old cutlery and copper wire and reusable shopping bags out of plastic bags). I like that act of creation, taking something and turning it into something new that didn’t exist anymore.

That’s what I like about science, it’s learning about the world/universe around us, with the possibility of combining old ideas and data into a new idea that’s not been thought of before, that just might possibly change the world. (I know it’s a very small chance, but still!)