• Question: Are you working on other projects?

    Asked by to Ben, Emily, Hattie, Jemma, Veronica on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Emily Hayward

      Emily Hayward answered on 16 Jun 2014:


      Hi Fabtastic05,

      Yes I do lots of other things as well as research. My PhD is only in the 1 project, but I find out information about other things too through speaking to those I work with. Within the 1 big project I do lots of smaller ones where I try to find out 1 small thing. As well as this I do projects like going to science festivals, and designing exhibits for them, doing things like ‘I’m a scientist’ and organising events. These arent so much ‘research projects’ but they are different sorts of projects, and allow me to do a wide variety of things 🙂

    • Photo: Veronica Celorrio

      Veronica Celorrio answered on 16 Jun 2014:


      You can’t really work in two things at the same time…it is really difficult because when you do research you have to keep yourself up to date of what people in other labs are doing. For that we have research papers that we publish in research journals.

      It would be relly complicated read as many papers it would be neccessary to work in different projects…But what scientist do, is collaboration! Which means…that I might be really good making new materials, but someone else might be really good at testing materials for a purpose. So I would be more thn happy to send you some of my materials if you test them for me.

      Team work!

    • Photo: Jemma Rowlandson

      Jemma Rowlandson answered on 16 Jun 2014:


      Hi!

      At the moment, yes I am! My PhD is a bit different to normal, Emily did the same thing. In my first year I do two projects and then decide which one I want to spend the next three years on. My first one is running cars off water and my second one is looking at solar cells.

      Solar cells are a great invention! You’ve probably seen them before, ever seen solar panels on the roof of a house? That’s them! They take light from the Sun and turn it into electricity. This is pretty much unlimited power but the problem is they are quite expensive, and they only capture a small part of the Sun’s light. I am looking at a new solar cell material to produce more electricity than current solar panels.

    • Photo: Harriet Aitken

      Harriet Aitken answered on 23 Jun 2014:


      Hi fabtastic05,

      I work on a big project but within that there are other smaller things I work on. So my main research area is the development of a system for the treatment of arsenic from drinking water using iron; at the moment I have three different kinds of system but they are all pretty similar.

      But then I have a project that is connected with the testing of the concentration of arsenic in water – it’s something I had to learn to do as part of my project but I am now trying to develop another kind of way to test for arsenic and other chemicals at the same time.

      I find that sometimes you can get so caught up in your project that you need to take a little break – and sometimes by working on something else you get good ideas for other things!

      Thanks for the question, Hattie.

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