Profile

My name is Ally, and I grew up in  Nottingham, but I lived in the USA for a few years when I was a kid! I always liked Chemistry at school but I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I just kept studying the things I was good at and enjoyed!

I also did a lot of music and drama at school. I acted in plays and musicals, joined and choir and played violin in an orchestra for a bit! I also ran our school’s branch of the National Council of Young Women and organised a conference with lots of local schools.

I played Netball and Badminton while I was at school, and continued playing netball at uni.

I also love baking, and doing escape rooms. I take any opportunity to travel, and have a scratch map on my wall that I’m slowly scratching off! The best place I’ve been so far is Mexico!

I didn’t know what I wanted to do for work, so I just ended up googling “Chemistry graduate jobs” and seeing what came up! This led me to the nucleargraduates scheme. The scheme is 2 years long and gives us the opportunity to visit different companies that are working on nuclear energy and get experience working for them!

At the moment I’m working for UKAEA, a company working to develop fusion energy, which would be a clean source of energy to help us solve the world’s energy problems! The team I work with are focused on testing materials that are used to build a fusion reactor, to see how they behave under the conditions of the reactor. That way we know what materials are the best to use when building future fusion reactors!

My day starts at 7am, because I like to get my work done early and have lots of free time in the evenings! I have cereal and fruit for breakfast, and take a prepared lunch with me to work (I usually prepare these on the weekends).  I get to work at 8:15. I have a little office I share with 2 other people, and my own desk where I can keep all my stuff.

At the moment my job involves helping my managers with work wherever I can, so they often call me up and ask for help with tasks. I help them with experiments in the lab, where they test materials to see how they’d act in a nuclear reactor! I also have my own project, making the lab better for everyone working in it, so I get to meet lots of people and talk about what they need to do their experiments. I then write documents to keep track and communicate what everybody needs.

I always have lunch with other people from my grad scheme, or other people I work with, or go to singing practise for a group made up of people from work! I continue working until about 4:30, and then go home. I live with other people on my graduate scheme, so we like to spend time together in the evenings, watching movies, cooking or going out.

Nuclear energy has a bad reputation because of mistakes that have been made in the past, but nuclear energy is now a very safe way of producing energy! I think it is important to make sure young people understand the potential of nuclear energy to help us, and maybe encourage people to persue jobs in the nuclear industry as well.

To do this I would plan and run activities in schools that inspire young people about nuclear energy, including learning about the science behind it as well as the politics! There would be games, quizzes, interactive activities and learning opportunities.