Profile

I’m on a grad scheme straight out of university which moves me about the country for the next couple of years – currently I’m living (and enjoying) Derby! I’ve enjoyed it more than I thought I would, having lived the first 19 years of my life in the West Midlands and never thinking too positively about the East Midlands!

My main hobbies involve getting outdoors, usually cold and wet! I accidentally got into whitewater kayaking at university and absolutely fell in love with it, I’ve made some of my best friends through the sport and been to some great places doing it. Although weekends spent kayaking are often long and exhausting (everything around Derby is river-less so I often go to North Wales or the Lakes in search of rivers!) there’s no better way to spend my free time.

Outside of that I’m a ridiculously competitive quizzer, and enjoy trying to cook as many fancy recipes as my bank account allows!

I work as a materials engineer in the nuclear sector. My work’s focused on looking at the properties of materials, and how we design and manufacture different materials for the different situations we need them for – do they need to be able to cope with high temperatures, or support a heavy load?

My main focus is on corrosion – when materials fail due to the environments they’re in. I got interested in this through university, so ending up in a job where I get to work on it is very exciting! So far I’ve investigated different tests we commonly use in our labs, to look if there could be any problems with them or if we could make them better.

I’ve been working in manufacturing engineering recently – and although materials and manufacturing both begin with ‘M’, they’re totally different! I’ve been learning lots of new things, but still been able to put my materials knowledge to use.

I get into work any time between 8 and 8:30, although it’s pretty flexible so as long as I’m in for enough hours a week no one minds. My mornings are often spent oversleeping and then running around eating toast and/or bagels, and hoping I’ve remembered to make lunch the night before!

Once I get into work I usually take some time to go through emails, and check my calendar to see if I’ve got anything on that day, or anything I need to prepare for coming up. I’m a big fan of lists, so often write down all the tasks I need to do or people I need to speak to – sometimes I’ll do lists a couple of times a day!

My days are then pretty varied. I can be sat at my desk going through documents or reports, or writing my own. Some of the projects I’ve worked on have been pretty research-heavy, so I sometimes spend quite a lot of time sat research topics and reading papers. Other times it can be a bit more hands on, so on the shop floor or in one of the labs, either collecting results from people, or doing some hands-on lab work myself.

One thing I didn’t fully anticipate was how social the job was, so much of my time is spent speaking to people, either in proper meetings or just going up to them and asking for 5 minutes. I really enjoy it though, and I’ve soon got over my fear of asking ‘dumb’ questions – the sooner you ask them, the sooner you start learning! Although even now, I still find I’m learning lots and that the asking questions never ends.