Profile

I live in Sheffield, although I spend a lot of time commuting to my fiance in Liverpool and I intend to move there after my PhD.

After I did my A-levels I decided not to go to uni and instead worked for the NHS in operating theatres then went on to work processing blood donations. After doing this I then went to uni, studying physics then moving into a materials science PhD. I still love all the gore from my NHS days though and I like learning about the human body as a hobby of sorts.

I’m also a massive dinosaur and fossil fan. I have a tattoo of a brachiosaur and my engagement ring is fossilised dinosaur bone. I’ve even made a T-Rex style skull out of plaster which now sits in my living room on display. I love to eat far too much and sleep far too much but when I am making an effort to move, I do pole fitness

So I try to make new uranium compounds by sticking existing uranium compounds into a special furnace. The furnace has a supply of ammonia gas and heats up to 1100C with the intention of the ammonia breaking down and reacting with the starting material.

The furnace I use. It’s about the size of a microwave so not very big, but it doesn’t need to be as I only use small amounts of uranium

The aim with this is to find new compounds that might be formed when nuclear reactors have serious accidents. These are called loss of coolant accidents and the resulting really hot explosions, like those at Chernobyl and Fukushima, cause the nuclear fuel to melt which can make new compounds like those I’m trying to recreate. I’ve also branched out into using technetium to make similar new compounds.

A typical day for me is mainly lab based. We have a whole dedicated lab for radioactive materials and a process for working safely and monitoring everything so we don’t contaminate ourselves and the rest of the lab. I tend to work in a dedicated glovebox to keep all my compounds away from everybody else.

I make samples by grinding up powders and mixing them really well before heating them to bake them into a uranium compound I can use in my furnace. I also make starting compounds by dissolving mixtures and drying off the liquid to give me fine powders to work with. I then transfer it to my ammonia furnace. It gets sealed into the tube and then I have to check that there’s no gas leaking as it’s both toxic and smells really, really bad. My samples take up to 3 days to make so I often have lots going on at any time.

Once I make a sample, I measure it using a number of machines we have and use lots of special computer programs to look at that data, which takes lots of learning before I can even comment on my samples.

One of my samples. Most of what I start with is black in colour and turns to lovely shades of green after the reaction

As I’m doing a PhD, I also have to do a lot of writing which has to fit around everything I do in the lab. I normally work from 09:30 to maybe 7pm or even later if I have a lot to fit in