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Asked by anon-207872 to William, Silvia, Scott, Oliver, Natalie, Michelle, Lowri on 4 Mar 2019.
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Lowri Evans answered on 4 Mar 2019:
Oh another tough question! Projects can be quite short in science. At the moment my project will last until October 2020… so I do need to be thinking about the next project soon. I think I would like to combine some aspects of my PhD on animal body size, climate warming and fishing in some way. Climate warming influences the body size of some animals, whilst fishing reduces resources, so we need to consider both things if we are to try to predict if habitats are healthy in the future under a warmer climate with continued fishing.
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Silvia Imberti answered on 4 Mar 2019:
I am usually juggling quite a few projects at the same time… because I work in a facility, people come to “my” instrument with their project as well, so I do collaborate on a number of projects for other peoples well. I am currently working on:
#polymers (why do they collapse in a tangled mess when you add alcohol to water?);
#sugars (why sugar molecules -glucose, fructose, lactose, mannose etc) all look pretty much the same apart from one tiny little difference but TASTE different? (this is actually a good game: find a picture – from wikipedia – and try and build them with a ball-and-stick set – I am sure your school has one – see if you can spot the differences, or if you mate can!) – hint: it’s because they bind water molecule differently!
#catalysts (water soluble one) – imagine if you could do chemistry in water, rather than nasty solvents?
#electrochemistry, materials for (trying to build better batteries)
#osmolytes (How can organisms survive extreme conditions? hot/cold/pressure/dehydration? It’s because they have special molecules in their body that help retains water/block water form freezing/substitute water etc etc.)
and many more….Ask me about this is you are interested in knowing more!
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Natalie Lamb answered on 5 Mar 2019:
My PhD won’t be finished until next year. When I finish I would like to be a scientist at the company who fund my research, Anglian Water, who supply water and sewerage services to the East of the UK. I would like to make sure people are drinking safe water by taking lots of samples from kitchen taps around the area and analysing them to see what is there.
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Michelle Valkanas answered on 6 Mar 2019:
Once I leave uni there are so many different routes I can take. If I want to be a professor at a uni and have my own lab, I have to do a post doc, which means extensive research in an adjacent field. This assures I get enough expertise to teach and run a lab. However, I want to go into environmental consulting. I can go straight into that field and work with engineers to design solutions for our current water pollution issues. This will allow me to use my background obtained at uni in a hands-on way.
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Scott Graham answered on 7 Mar 2019:
with most of my work consisting of analysing water samples for industry and not research I don’t really have much research projects going on as such. However I am involved in smaller side projects such as new method development to make our testing more quicker and easier. Recently I was involved in a project to see how beneficial it would be to change from using one method to a newer one to identify pseudomonas. It turns out the new method would give results in 24 hours rather 3 days. for customers this is something that they would prefer
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