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#WNBiPonWednesdays Anubha Bal

Welcome back to #WNBiPonWednesdays! For our latest interview, we spoke to Master’s student, Anubha, who is currently studying on the QFFF (Quantum Fields and Fundamental Forces) course. Thank you for your time Anubha!

As an introduction, describe your path into physics, what kickstarted it?

I had actually wanted to be a lawyer for a long time. I was quite headstrong and vocal about my opinions (not much has changed!), and my strongest subjects had always been the humanities in school so it felt like the appropriate career path. I didn’t pay much attention to science or maths as I felt I wasn’t “naturally” good at them. When I studied (Scottish) Higher Physics (Year 12 equivalent), we had a brief introduction to Special Relativity, and I started enjoying it much more after that. I still felt that physics didn’t seem to come “naturally” to me, but I was lucky to have very supportive teachers who suggested that I could be a scientist if I wanted to. I started dedicating more time to trying to really understand maths and science rather than just studying for the exams, and the more I did, the more I enjoyed them and the easier it became to do well. My decision to study physics over law was quite an impulsive one after that, and it’s the best decision I ever made!

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#WNBiPonWednesdays Jasmine Ajaz

Welcome back for another week of #WNBiPonWednesday interviews! This week we spoke to Jasmine, a final year undergraduate student, completing her MSci project on inertial confinement fusion. Thank you for your time Jasmine!

As an introduction, what is the topic of your MSci Project and what are you working on now?

My MSci project is focussed on inertial confinement fusion (ICF). We are using a 1D radiation-hydrodynamic code called Gorgon to simulate DT fuel capsule implosions on the scale of the National Ignition Facility seeking to optimise the vast parameter space of the problem, namely the laser pulse shape parameters. Currently, we are working on fine tuning the resolution of the simulations through convergence tests to produce reliable results while keeping the optimisation computationally ‘cheap’.

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#WNBiPonWednesdays: Ginevra Casati

For our next interview, we spoke to Ginevra, a PhD student in plasma physics. Thank you Ginevra for your time! Stay tuned for our next interview!

As an introduction, what is your area of expertise within Physics and what are you currently working on?

The title of my PhD is laser plasma ion acceleration for future medical applications. So the aim of my work is to perform experiments that try and optimise the current state-of-the-art laser plasma ion acceleration techniques and there’s several different approaches to laser plasma acceleration. I’m exploring, in particular, radiation pressure acceleration and lysale acceleration. So I do lots of experiments abroad where we have laser systems capable of delivering the energy required for these schemes. And when I’m at Imperial, I normally perform simulations to inform the experiments. The hope is that at some point we will have a laser at imperial which will be able to also performs some smaller scale experiments, which will then be very valuable for the bigger experiments that we do abroad. But as of now, the laser isn’t quite working yet, so I mainly do simulations and calibration stuff here and then I go abroad into the bigger experiments.

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#WNBiPonWednesdays: Shivangi Sharan

We’re back! After a short break we’re really happy to be running our interview series again, with a new name, #WNBiPonWednesdays! To start off this term, we’ve interview Dr. Shivangi Sharan, a Post-Doctoral researcher in the Space, Plasma, and Climate Community. Thank you for your time Shivangi!

As an introduction, what is your area of expertise within Physics and what are you currently working on?

My area of expertise is in planetary magnetism, more specifically, on interior structure determination by making use of magnetic field measurements from satellite missions. I have worked on Earth, Mars and Jupiter and am currently working on Ganymede in my postdoc. The JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) mission to study the moons of Jupiter was launched on 14th April 2023 and will reach Jupiter’s orbit in 2031. In the meantime, we are trying to prepare for the science that we hope to do after we receive the data from the satellite. One of the main aims is to understand the interior structure of the largest moon of our Solar System, Ganymede. The moon is believed to possess a subsurface ocean that we are very interested in. My work is to predict the magnetic signals we can obtain from the ocean that will help us confirm this layer. (more…)

International Women’s Day #WomenonWednesdays: Michele Dougherty

This International Women’s Day I sat down with Michele Dougherty to talk about her journey, research, and experiences as a Woman in Physics. Thank you very very much for your time Michele and we wish you the best of luck as you move to the Institute of Physics!

As an introduction, what is your area of expertise within physics and what has been your journey to where you are now?

I am a planetary scientist. So what my team does is they build instruments, magnetometers, that fly o

n spacecraft and my focus in the last 20 years or so has been Saturn and its moons, and now it’s Jupiter and its moons; there’s an instrument on its way to Jupiter. And the way in which I got into this area was rather a roundabout way. I was actually trained as an applied mathematician. I was at an all girls school in South Africa and I didn’t do science and I was really fortunate, my dad worked at the local university and they were prepared to take a chance on me, so I did a BSc without having done science and the first year was really hard. I remember I’d go home every evening and my dad would go through the lecture notes with me. So it took me a while to feel that I’d come up to speed, but I got a PhD in applied maths and then I was in Germany for two years on a fellowship and then I came to imperial as a postdoc on a two year contract and I was asked if I wanted to put a magnetic field model together for Jupiter. I knew nothing about either. And I thought yeah, that sounded cool. So I said yes. And so that’s how I ended up doing what I do.

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Imperial Lates: Space – On Science and Self

On 7th December, W&NBiP Society hosted a series of talks at the Imperial Lates: Space event. Titled On Science and Self, we had four amazing researchers speak about their experiences: describing how they got into physics and what they love about their job. Many thanks to Cara, Sophia, Shivangi and Ayushi for showing the human side of science.

Shivangi:

If I can develop interest and provide the courage and confidence to even one person to pursue Space research, it’s worth my time and effort.

7th December turned out to be more fun than I had anticipated. While my morning was busy with attending and discussing a recent paper in our journal club, the evening was reserved for trying to get people interested in what I do. But as it turns out, I didn’t really need to do anything. Imperial Lates, which was organised with the theme ‘Space’ this time showed me that people, irrespective of their ages and profession were very much fascinated by Space and Planetary research!

The evening started off with us being assigned a corner in the college main foyer to display a LEGO model and some videos of the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) mission. Right next to our table was a cocktail stand (Icenine) that served three cocktails based on the icy moons of Jupiter- Ganyme’jito, Europa Martini and Marga’listo. Although we got a lot of people interested in the cocktails and the LEGO, the main highlight of the event came later when I had to present my academic journey and postdoctoral work for the ‘Women in Space’ talks. I was extremely glad to watch the room getting full and the excitement on everyone’s face when I talked about the mission and the moons. The discussions and Q&A round was even more eventful with hopefully the audience taking home some understanding of the research I presented. While I was hoping to impart some of my experience and knowledge, I in turn returned more confident about what I do. People often ask me why I do outreach and my answer has been consistent. If I can develop interest and provide the courage and confidence to even one person to pursue Space research, it’s worth my time and effort. But now I can also add that it proves to be useful as a self motivator as well!

Copyright Brendan Foster

#WomenonWednesdays: Yasmin Andrew

For our final #WomenonWednesdays interview of 2023 we spoke to Dr Yasmin Andrew, student liaison officer and researcher in plasma physics!

As an introduction, what is your area of expertise within Physics?

My plasma physics research is on magnetically confined fusion.  I plan and run experiments on a number conventional and spherical tokamaks across the world, including MAST-U and ST40 in Oxfordshire, and DIII-D in San Diego. The specific topic I work on, with a very talented team of physicists, is fusion plasma turbulence and self-organisation in a very narrow edge region of the tokamak.  My interest in the dynamics of self-regulation between different plasma variables and causality, which I study using a combination of dedicated tokamak experiments, high resolution diagnostic data, 3-D turbulence simulations and novel statistical analysis approaches.

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#WomenonWednesdays: Abigail Levison

This week for #WomenonWednesdays we spoke to Abigail, a third year physics undergraduate, currently on her year abroad in Switzerland!

Describe your path into physics, what kickstarted it?

My path into physics is slightly unusual: I had planned for all of sixth form to study maths at university since that was always my favourite subject at school. I even applied to do maths at some universities. It took sitting the STEP papers (an admissions test used by some universities for maths) for me to realise I loved applied maths much much more than pure maths. Every time I read about pure maths I thought, “that’s cool, but what can I use this for?”

I discovered that the problem-solving I loved from maths and further maths A level was in fact closer to the maths in a physics degree than in a maths degree. And when I came to Imperial and started my physics degree, I knew immediately that physics was exactly the subject I wanted.

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#WomenonWednesdays: Ellie Tubman

For this week’s #WomenonWednesdays interview, we spoke to Dr Ellie Tubman, a lecturer in Experimental ICF / HEDP Science.

As an introduction, what is your area of expertise within Physics?

I am a plasma physicist working on fusion energy and laboratory astrophysics using laser facilities such as NIF, Omega and Orion. You may have heard of NIF in California where they recently achieved ignition last Christmas where we got more energy out than we put in to our fuel, a really exciting result! I am particularly interested in the magnetic fields that can be generated in the interactions and how that affects the phenomena. At Imperial I am involved in teaching 1st year laboratory.

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#WomenonWednesdays: Nikita Chaturvedi

This week for #WomenonWednesdays we spoke to Nikita, a PhD student in plasma physics!

As an introduction, describe your pathway into physics, what kickstarted it?

I was first drawn to physics through maths in high school – I enjoyed the subject itself but liked the applied side much better. Physics seemed to combine the theoretical side of maths into something grounded in reality, at least that’s what I thought until starting quantum mechanics in uni! Once at Imperial I started off terrible at computational physics, but grew to enjoy it over the years, so much so that I ended up doing an MSc in a field called computational fluid dynamics. There is something very satisfying about translating governing equations into a code, and using it to simulate complicated systems. My master’s degree then laid the groundwork for my PhD, which is also based in numerical physics.

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