Meet the scientists!

I coordinate all the processes and expert advice we need to ensure we make good decisions on who gets the money, and I make sure that once we’ve given it out that it’s spent wisely. If there are new big science projects on the horizon, often they are too expensive for one country to afford. So I go to meetings with funding representatives from all the other interested countries (sometimes in very nice places!) and we work together to figure out how we’re going to get the project funded and built. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes, in parallel to the scientists doing all the design and technical work.

When I’m in the office I usually get in between 9-9.30, make a cup of tea, spend some time reading and responding to email and then get stuck into my work for the day. I usually either go to the canteen for lunch, or go for a run, or into town, then back to work until 5.30-6ish. On a typical day I’ll have one or two meetings with colleagues to talk about work issues. Quite often I’m off travelling, either to one of the other STFC sites, or to a university, or for meetings abroad. This year I’ve been to Pisa, Bonn, CERN (the particle physics lab where the LHC is, near Geneva) and Santiago de Compostela.

1) ‘Taking science’ is a series of events run by STFC where we get scientists to come and talk about what they do. You don’t need to be a scientist to understand what they’re on about! We’ve had some amazing people like Brian Cox. I’d love to get someone like Jim Al Khalili (nuclear physicist from Surrey university) – he’s done some really good TV programmes and popular science books. It’s amazing to hear first hand what gets our speakers really excited about science. I’d get it recorded too so that it could be put on youtube for everyone to see. 2) My other idea is to find some willing scientists to be followed around all day by a video camera (and not just at work – at home before they leave for work, their journey, their day at work, whatever they’re up to in the evening, so maybe down the pub or in the gym or at home watching telly). I’d speed it up so you’d get a glimpse of the whole day in the space of a few minutes, and then have a short interview with them afterwards. It would show that scientists do ordinary as well as extraordinary things!