Profile

I live about 13 miles outside of Hull, in a village called Brough. I don’t have any pets as I’m never at home long enough to look after one properly.

I can quote most episodes of Friends, and I am a Disney and Marvel fanatic.

• Favourite Avenger – Thor (the fit version, before he gets fat).
• Favourite Disney film – Lilo and Stitch

I’m quite sporty and play in a Netball league (we are actually quite good). I’m also rather musical and can play several instruments including trumpet, saxophone, and piano.

I have tattoos and piercings, and these have never held me back in my career.

Well, at the minute everything is a bit strange as I’m having to work from home a lot, and I can’t really do any research!

However, over the last three weeks I have been involved in a project to produce face shields for people working in hospitals or as front-line carers. The shields will help to protect them from catching COVID-19, and means they can carry on looking after people. These people are true heroes!

NHS staff wearing our 3D printed face shields

We have designed our own visors, and have been 3D printing them. We can make approximately 200 a day in our Fablab.

University of Hull Fablab, with printed head visors

Stack of visor headbands being 3D printed

We realised this wasn’t enough, so we have changed the design a little, and are now manufacturing them using injection moulding. This means we can produce one visor every 10 seconds. So we can give out 4000 face shields a day!

Injection moulded visors, produced every 10 seconds

We have hit a few problems though! We have to use a very specific material to make the visor as it needs to be able to cleaned properly. This material is now out of stock in the UK, and we are waiting for the next shipment into the country which takes place on Thursday. We have just bought enough material to make 35,000 visors!

I’ve spent a lot of time being interviewed by the BBC, ITV, Sky News and various other newspapers and radio stations. It’s been crazy! This is my newspaper pose (so embarrassing)

Hopefully I will be able to get back to my real job of teaching my students, and researching new dressings very soon.  This is just one example of all the unexpected exciting projects engineers get involved with outside of their normal job! Engineering changes lives, and you will always be able to have a positive impact on someone’s life!

I think that it would be great  to run a drop-in session at the orthopaedic unit at the local hospital, inviting patients to come and meet the engineers who are designing and working with the new implants. Usually patients only have contact with the doctors and surgeons who often only explain the medical aspects of the operation, and can only answer the very basics about the science of the implant.

Wouldn’t it be good if you could hold the implant that you were about to receive, and ask about the materials its made from, why its the shape it is, why it will only last 10 years, and what the future holds for orthopaedic implants?

It’s also really important that as engineers we see how our ideas fit with society, and to see if people are aware of our work and the potential inventions and designs that are on the horizon!

Public engagement is for everyone, even those with broken bones!