• Question: how does your job actually work?

    Asked by anon-177567 to Becky, Andrew, Daniel, Helen, Nicola, Urslaan on 12 Jun 2018. This question was also asked by anon-177684.
    • Photo: Becky Thomas

      Becky Thomas answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      Good question. My job is very varied, but it breaks down into 3 parts (teaching, research and admin). I teach undergrduate students ecology and conservation, I do research into how people influence wildlife in towns and cities and then general admin (

    • Photo: Urslaan Chohan

      Urslaan Chohan answered on 19 Jun 2018:

      As I now work in industry, my work is quite different to academic jobs. In this role, I am provided with projects by clients (companies that my company does work for), which contain data to analyse. I do the analysis of the data then write reports which advise other companies on better ways to handle their data.

    • Photo: Helen Littler

      Helen Littler answered on 19 Jun 2018:

      Someone has a problem such as too many cyclists are getting injured at a junction. I look at the problem and suggest a solution. If they like the solution then I do detailed drawings of how to build it. Lots of people bid for the work and the winner gets to build it. I then go and check they are building it correctly or if they have problems I tell them how to fix it.

    • Photo: Daniel Marsh

      Daniel Marsh answered on 21 Jun 2018:

      I am involved it setting up lots of pollution monitors all over cities in different places to represent the air that we breathe. The monitors run 24 hours a day and we collect all the data back to computers in the office and make it availabe to the public through websites and apps so they can see what the air is like where they live, work or go to school. We also let the government know how our air is changing over time, especially after we have made any big changes to the types of traffic that we allow into our city centres or when we have cleaner buses and taxis so we can see if it is helping to reduce pollution levels. There are many sources of pollution so part of my job is discovering how much of this comes from construction work and the machines that the industry are using – if we use cleaner machines in city centres then we can help to reduce the pollution and it will stop making people ill.

Comments

  • Photo: Becky

    Becky commented on :

    Sorry! Posted before I finished! General admin is the roles I have within my department (e.g. Academic coordinator – which means I oversee some of ther departments teaching). In terms of research I don’t get out into the field as much as I used to, but I supervise students doing project and then we write papers together, which get published and then read by other scientists.