Month: October 2022

#WomenonWednesdays: Meriame Berboucha

This week we talked to Meriame Berboucha, a PhD student in the Plasma Physics group currently based at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California.

Describe your path into physics, what kickstarted it?

During my A levels I was taken to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot for a medical physics masterclass and I fell in love with the subject – I was interested in helping others and I loved physics and maths and it seemed like the perfect subject for me.

Even though I had written my personal statement for medical school already, I scraped it a few months before the deadline, to apply for physics degrees at university. At the time I felt like I was taking a gamble and my parents wanted me to do medicine, but deep down I really enjoyed physics and that is what I wanted to do. I owe a lot to my physics A level teacher though for really making me feel included in the class and not ‘weird’ for studying the subject. I then became the first woman at that school to take physics onto higher education.

(more…)

#WomenonWednesdays: Trinity Stenhouse

For our first Women on Wednesdays this academic year, we’ve talked to Trinity Stenhouse, a third-year student on the MSci Physics with Theoretical Physics course. She’s also currently Vice-President (Activities) of the RCSU and is involved in the IC WNBiP committee!

Describe your path into physics, what kickstarted it?

I’ve always been interested in how things work, but I’ve also always had really broad interests. For me, physics was a way to understand how, fundamentally, everything works.

I was also really lucky to have a teacher at my high school who took me under his wing and taught me physics content well above A level. He saw that I was always bored and doodling in lessons so gave me a project to do investigating dynamical theories above the standard model that could explain the Higgs hierarchy problem. I got really invested in it and spent a lot of time researching theories. This helped me recognise my passion for research and establish that I would like to do a PhD one day in particle physics.

(more…)