• Question: What do you specialise in?

    Asked by anon-290492 to Megan, Jo, Geraint, Claire, Callum on 16 Mar 2021.
    • Photo: Megan Metcalfe

      Megan Metcalfe answered on 16 Mar 2021:

      I specialise in submerged landscapes. Over the past hundreds of thousands of years, sea levels have risen and fallen in relation to periods of glaciation (the ice ages). During periods of low sea level, a lot of the UK coast would have been dry land that might have been home to some of the very first humans. I try and map out these landscapes so we can target areas that we might find archaeology (such as flint tools that might be hundreds of thousands of years old)!

    • Photo: Jo Brodie

      Jo Brodie answered on 18 Mar 2021:

      Hello Heidi 🙂 I have specialised in different things throughout my career. Initially I studied Biology and Neuroscience (study of the brain) and worked in a lab as a scientist, researching lipids (the chemicals that create fats and oils) found in the cell membrane in brain cells.
      ~
      Then I started working at Diabetes UK not as a scientist but as a science communicator – someone who explains complex scientific information in plain English. Because I’d studied a lot of biochemistry (the molecules of life) and physiology (how our bodies work) at University I already knew a bit about diabetes, the pancreas and insulin – but I still had a huge amount to learn in order for me to write about diabetes and answer people’s questions about it. So I soon specialised (in a general sense) in all aspects of diabetes: research, treatment, technologies, how it affected people’s daily lives etc.
      ~
      Now I work for the CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun) schools magazine writing about computer science and computing research and how it links up with other subjects. Like most people I use computers every day (I’m typing on one right now!) but I’ve still had to learn all sorts of things about how people use computers to solve problems. Now I specialise in computing as a topic. Our next magazine issue is about computing and health (‘Smart Health’) and I’ve really enjoyed combining my specialisms (health and computing) and have even written an article about diabetes and computing 🙂
      ~
      Jo

    • Photo: Geraint Evans

      Geraint Evans answered on 25 Mar 2021:

      I specialise in high-density, low-temperature nuclear and quark matter. It might sound scary but it’s really cool (pun intended)! Let me try and break it down.

      Everything is made of atoms, tiny small things that make up everything. If the universe was made of Lego, atoms would be the Lego bricks. But even Lego bricks are made of something, and I study those things. The things that Lego bricks are made out of. What atoms are made out of or sub-atomic particles. The words “nuclear” and “quark” mean they’re smaller than atoms.

      Specifically, I study what happens when we crush, squeeze and squash these tiny things together so there is barely any room between them anymore (that’s the “high-density” bit) and they’re really cold compared to the rest of the environment (that’s the “low-temperature” bit). They start behaving funny at this point, and I think about the crazy things they do!

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