Profile

I’m a PhD student at Imperial College London, working in one of our many robotics labs. Most of my time is spent designing and building new wearable sensors, just like the ones in smartwatches, and the rest of my time I spend making other cool things, playing football, or eating pizza. My dream is to go to Mars as an astronaut!

Sometimes, when people get a severe brain disease it can make their brain less able to control their body. An example of this is Parkinson’s disease. I’m designing sensors to study the changes that take place in these people – such as walking more slowly, or being less balanced. With this information, it may be possible to make better treatments and improve the lives of these people.

In reality, there is no ‘typical’ day. Part of doing a PhD is that you get to decide what work you want to do, and you get to set your own deadlines. That means that almost every day, I just do the thing that I feel like doing – so sometimes that’s writing some new code for an App, and other times it’s testing out a new design for a sensor. Every day is different, and I get to decide!

In reality, what I’d like to do is develop a health monitoring kit that you can make and personalise. It would record maybe your heartbeat, and how active you are during the day – maybe even with a leaderboard for your class. Who would be the most active? You could customise it too, and make it whatever colour and shape you like!