Profile

Hi! I’m Sunchi, and here is a bit more about me 🙂

I grew up in Bristol. In school, I enjoyed art, science, and maths. A lot of people think art and science are very different, but I think they make each other better! I decided I wanted to be an engineer because I can get creative and make things using science. I’m also the first person to become an engineer in my family.

I have 2 degrees from the University of Birmingham, both related to nuclear science. I also spent a lot of time at university planning events for my coursemates, and reaching out to secondary and college students to encourage them into STEM careers.

My job is to figure out what materials would be best to build a nuclear fusion reactor. Nuclear fusion is what makes our Sun burn, giving out heat and light. A nuclear fusion reactor is a machine that uses the same process as the Sun to create heat, that can be used to make electricity for our homes. Essentially, we are trying to create a mini Sun on Earth! As you can imagine, it’s very challenging to keep something so hot and powerful inside a machine, and it needs some special and very interesting materials to do this. Sometimes, I develop and test these materials using microscopes, super hot heaters, lasers, and even beams of radiation!

I chose this work because nuclear reactors are important for our fight against climate change. They make power without releasing harmful gases, like carbon dioxide, into our atmosphere.

I start my day around 9am, most of my day is meeting with my teammates to discuss our materials research. We talk about what materials are interesting, what type of tests will be useful and what our newest test results are. Sometimes I do these meetings online from home as some teammates might be in different countries!

For projects I’m managing, I will spend time catching up on test results from our material testing experts and comparing them to decide if a new material is performing well or not.

When I work from home, I like to spend my lunch hour cooking a nice meal because I love food! When I work at our office, I like to have lunch with my work friends, and we catch up on our day so far.

I usually go straight back into meetings after lunch. If I don’t have any meetings, I might spend time writing a research paper, analysing results, attending seminars from other people in the company to learn about new things, or reading more about new materials.