Profile

I spent time trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up! Then there was a climate crisis and I realised that I was good at telling people about science without it confusing them. So although my qualifications are all in science I don’t actually spend much time in a laboratory.

Outside of work I’m a climate activist, a mum to a cheeky 4 year old, an avid gardener and social media addict!

In nature plants convert water into oxygen and protons and combine these with carbon dioxide from the air to make carbohydrates, which it uses as food for itself. Plants are very clever doing this as it’s not an easy reaction, but then they have had billions of years to get it right!

Recently scientists have been trying to recreate what plants do, but also simplify the process so that we can do it in a couple of steps, rather than the 10+ steps that plants use. This is the project that I’ve been working on. working up. We’re trying to make a catalyst – that splits the water and the carbon dioxide up and reforms them into a useful product (like ethanol which everyone is using as a hand sanitiser!)

We make the catalyst out of copper. This means trying different copper shapes to see which ones are the best at changing the carbon dioxide into something else – it’s not an easy job as we still don’t understand what makes a good catalyst but I’m making some progress 🙂

As part of that I started thinking about how much carbon dioxide we produce in our everyday lives. I wanted to start telling people to make less carbon dioxide, to have a lower carbon footprint. So, with some colleagues, who are now good friends, I set up the You and CO2 workshop where we teach students all about their carbon footprints and climate change and try to encourage them to make behavioural changes.

These days I don’t do much lab work anymore.

I’ve been developing a new scheme of work for schools that teaches students in years 8, 9 and 10 about their carbon footprint. It shows how we don’t just need scientists to fix climate change but we actually need creative writers and artists and communicators as well. We hope that it will help students to change their behaviours to reduce their carbon footprint.

To do this I’ve been working with some great colleagues who are spread out across the UK. So we have meetings on Skype to talk about the work and how we can make it better. We also trial it in schools and then talk to the teachers and the students to see what they thought of it.

I write grant applications to try and persuade people to give me money to keep developing this work. I also manage any money that we do have which has meant learning about finances and budgets and contracts!