What A-Levels did you study?

I completed high school in Sydney, Australia, where I studied in my final year, Maths, Modern History, English, Chemistry, and Latin.

Degrees?

I have  BSc (Hons) from the Australian National University, in Canberra Australia, in Physical Chemistry. I studied the Fluctuation Theorems which govern how often things go backwards.

My job is…

I am a PhD student in Dr Richard Berry's Rotary Motor Group at Oxford University. The bacterial flagellar motor is the fastest biomachine on the planet and rotates to drive a propellor which makes bacteria swim.

It is only 40nm in size, can build itself, detect changes in its environment and manoeuvre bacteria towards food. I specifically look at what happens when we cool down the motor, to slow down its rotation and try to look at the underlying mechanism by which it can generate torque. We know it rotates more slowly at low temperature, but is it simply temperature affected kinetics or is it because less energy is available to the motor? Can we determine something about how it steps by looking at how the size and time taken for individual steps changes with temperature?

Home is…

I was raised in Dunedin, New Zealand, and in Sydney, Australia, I went to university in Canberra, and now Oxford is my home.

The story so far…

I was born in Oxford in November 1982 and returned with my family to Dunedin, New Zealand, in December the same year. I spent 10 years in New Zealand and then I moved to Australia to complete my high school and university education. I studied science at university in the broadest sense, doing chemistry, physics and maths throughout my degree which meant I missed some units (electromagnetism), but I did others many times over (thermal physics). I spent a year on exchange at University of California, Berkeley, which I absolutely loved and happened to be the first time in my life I hadn't been fencing regularly, so I got to enjoy my weekends. I started fencing when I first moved to Australia and have kept it up until the present day where I am a member of the Australian team, and I try to juggle not-really-training-hard-enough with not-really-working-hard-enough. I used to mess around with friends in Canberra and Sydney MCing and rapping, and eventually got into slam poetry as a happy medium between rap and poetry where pleasing the audience was the most important thing. I still do some of this today, and have recently been mixing poetry with science to communicate about the bacterial flagellar motor, food poisoning, and in general trying to mix wordsmithery with interesting science to provide entertainment.

Day in the life...

I usually arrive in the lab around 10am and check my emails for too long. I try to write down what I need to do that day and check with my plan for the week. Ideally everything would work according to the plan but usually other stuff comes up like fixing a piece of equipment, helping someone with some work, or getting involved in a discussion that goes too long so usually I don't end up finishing my 'tasks for the day'. About 4 nights a week I go to fencing training, sometimes this happens early in the morning at 8am so I start my day with that, other times it happens at around 7:30pm, so I finish work and go do that. I find it's a great way to detach from thesis and job stress. At the moment I am trying to write my thesis at the same time as writing some papers, so that I can hope to finish my degree, so depending on the daily plan, I'll either spend the day writing (or procrastinating), or doing an experiment, or analysing the results of a previous experiment. When writing I like to try and do the figures first, or try and write multiple sections at once so I keep interested in what I'm writing. I probably do my best work straight after dinner, between 7pm and 9pm, and I have a pretty slow start to my day. I usually watch a bit of TV at the end of the day and relax.

Pet project

I have wanted to make a wheelie bin soundsystem for the back of my bicycle for a while, as some of my friends have done in Australia.

Basically this is a wheelie bin with a car battery and stereo inside it so that it can be towed behind your bicycle. In general, I love finding out about new dancehall music and new music of any type.

Free time

As I said, I fence a lot in my free time, and also enjoy talking to people about anything. I guess I'd rather be busy than bored.

What are your burning ambitions?

I'd like to be a capable research scientist who is an good manager of people and who has the respect of his students and peers, and can communicate effectively about his work. I'd love to be doing good research, to be able to convince people that it was worthwhile, and to be making decisions about future directions in my group's research. I also like to be able to encourage people to get involved in science, even if it is just to challenge scientists to justify themselves; to increase the two-way interaction between the public and their scientists. If this meant being able to go on TV and talk about science in an interesting way, or to be a 'successful' poet (whatever that is) but also be known as a scientist, to show that art and science are not mutually exclusive, then all the better. Perhaps the best way to make science more approachable is to be a very approachable scientist, so this is my ambition: to do quality science but be able to talk to anyone at any time about anything.

The best thing is…

Answering a question perfectly and completely, helping the question asker  with their problem, but also learning something about the material from the question asked and in the way you answer it. If it's also funny and it helps other people who hadn't even realised they had that question, and you can feel that 'aha!' moment, mixed with genuine entertainment, then that is the "Best Thing Ever".

In general it's a great feeling, whether in sport, science, or public performance, to be performing at your best and feeling that you are 'in the zone'. It doesn't happen very often but it's great when that zen-like focus descends upon you and you can just relax and work effortlessly.

Any regret(s)?

I regret not studying electromagnetism at university as I use it all the time and don't think I understand it properly. I regret every flight I've ever missed or incorrectly booked (such as booking two flights back and no flight there) and I regret expensively going swimming with the rental car keys on my last holiday in Greece.

What do you love most about science and engineering?

Choosing an interesting problem and working with colleagues from a range of backgrounds to solve it.

Name ONE quirky/crazy fact about you or your job.

I went to two world championships for hacky sack competing as an intermediate but I wasn't very good and haven't kept it up at all.