• Question: what's your biggest accomplishment?

    Asked by anon-322872 to Scott, Lucy, Jamie, Daisy, Ali, Alin on 25 Mar 2022. This question was also asked by anon-322875.
    • Photo: Alistair McShee

      Alistair McShee answered on 25 Mar 2022:

      My company has a very large experiment we’ve been testing and upgrading for around 40 years now, and recently we just broke the world record for the amount of energy we could produce in it, and I was very proud to be a part of that work especially as I’ve only been at the company two years, and the last time the record was broken (by the same experiment) I hadn’t been born yet!

    • Photo: Daisy Shearer

      Daisy Shearer answered on 27 Mar 2022: last edited 27 Mar 2022 12:34 pm

      Getting my MPhys degree is my most ‘official’ biggest accomplishment. Linked to this, I’m proud that I’m still doing my PhD (and on track to graduate later this year) despite the pandemic having a big impact on my ability to be in the lab as well as on my mental health.

      I’s also say that my equality, diversity, and inclusion work and science communication work are accomplishments I’m proud of:

      I advocate for neurodivergent people in STEM (mostly as I’m autistic and want to help others like me with differently wired brains) and have created support groups for this both online and at my university. I’ve won several EDI awards associated with this work.

      On the science communication side of things, I’ve written articles for ‘Physics World’ and was the physics expert for the Usborne book ‘Physics for Beginners’.

      My social media communication is something that I’m especially proud of, particularly my Instagram page where I have an awesome audience of over 18,000 quantum physics enthusiasts who like to see what the life of a quantum physicist is like and ask me questions like the ones here on I’m a scientist! I’ve also won several science communication awards associated with this work.

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