Profile

I’m on a course called E-Futures, which means in my 1st year at Sheffield I got to learn all about different types of Renewable Energy (energy that doesn’t come from coal, oil or gas!). I learnt a little bit, about lots of ways, of making renewable energy, things like wind turbines and solar panels. I also got to do a few projects on how sustainable  and environmentally friendly,  the London 2012 Olympics was going to be and compared London to the other cities to have hosted the Olympic Games. This meant I could learn about renewable energy and suitability whilst studying a project I was really enthusiastic about!

Now I’m in my 2nd year, I’ve started my longer project. I’m looking at foundations for structures (the parts of a structure which is below the ground and keeps it from sinking into the ground) to see if there are ways which we can take the heat from the ground, provided by the sun, and use it to keep our buildings warm!

I generally get out of bed around 8am…and head into uni for 9ish!

I start the day by checking my emails and write a to-do-list whilst drinking a cup of tea – I like to try to be a little bit organised!

By mid-morning it’s time to start the day really begins….if I have experiments running I’ll check on those, and make sure they haven’t blown up or anything!

Then the rest of the day is filled with reading reports and journals, writing reports, meeting with my project supervisor. Occasionally, I’ll help out teaching some of the undergraduate students with tutorials or lab work.

Every so often, I’ll go to a conference to meet with other people who are studying the same subject as me so we can talk about what we have been doing and learn from what everyone else has been doing. It’s also a good opportunity to visit new places.

My day usually finishes about 5pm. Outside of university I like to play netball, meet with friends, do some cooking and get involved with volunteering projects!

The majority of the money will be use to develop a workshop allowing schools to come to the University of Sheffield and learn more about what goes on under a building and how we can produce energy from the ground. Giving an understanding to the importance of geotechnical engineering whilst giving a hands feel to what being a geotechnical engineer is like at university!

Alongside my PhD, I volunteer for the national charity Engineers without Borders (www.ewb-uk.org) so I’d like to donate  the remainder of the winnings to their University of Sheffield branch to be used on the schools outreach projects (http://www.ewb-outreach.org.uk/). This money would allow them to visit more schools to teach more young people about some of the problems in developing countries, such as lack of clean drinking water, poor toilet facilities, and transport problems. This would be done  by running workshops like ‘Water for the World’ and ‘Going in the distance’. It would also be amazing if they could use some of the money to create a new workshop on environmental problems like recycling in poorer countries.