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Age: 29

A-Levels: Maths, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, General
Studies

Degree: BA and MSc in Natural Sciences (Physics),
Churchill College, Cambridge University

Helen looks at bubbles in the ocean! Think clever underwater cameras and scuba. Diving puts a spring into Helen’s step.

My job is...
Bubble physics! I look at the bubbles underneath breaking waves and how they break up into smaller bubbles. This involves lots of high-speed photography and acoustics. Bubbles are really good at mixing air from the atmosphere into the ocean and so it's important to know what they're up to if you want to model the climate.

Home is...
Currently San Diego. I'm spending some time at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and I plan to come back to the UK soon. Currently home is right by the beach!

Story so far
At school, choosing G.C.S.E. and A level subjects was easy - I knew that I wanted to go into science, but I regretted not being able to study languages more. I've always had the attitude that if you do what interests you, this will lead to more things that interest you, and it's working so far! I really enjoyed doing lots of different activities, sport, music and environmental work but I was really shy and not very good at chatting to people I didn't know. If I tell that to anyone who knows me now though, they'll just laugh! It took a long time to come out of my shell, but I was really independent and fairly determined to do the things I wanted to do. When I thought about what I wanted to study, it was always clear that although all areas of science interest me, physics was the one I wanted to focus on. I've never had a long term plan - I reckon that situations will probably change in unpredictable ways so there's no point worrying about the possibilities years in advance. I did my PhD in one sort of physics and when I finished I decided that there were other areas I'd prefer to work in. So I changed topic from explosives to bubbles - both involve things that happen too fast for humans to see. And so it's not as if you pick a single area of science and then have to stick to it for teh rest of your life. You learn the skills and then see what you can apply them too.

Day in the life
It's a cliche, but there really isn't a typical day. Most days I'll work in the lab from 9am until 5 or 6pm. Usually there are so many different things that I could be doing that I'll choose what I feel like - you do things better when you're in the right mood for them. I tend to do reading and writing in the mornings and then after lunchtime I start to fidget and I'll go down to the lab and work there for the afternoon. So, the mornings are my time for learning more about my subject by reading papers and textbooks and also for writing reports or papers on my work. Lab work involves a variety of technical stuff - designing and building experiments and then carrying them out. I like solving technical challenges and it's always fun to see what happens when you perform an experiment. Then there are the routine jobs to help keep the lab in good condition - tidying and cleaning, and checking the condition of equipment. There are also seminars, lectures, meetings with other scientists and teaching undergraduates...no shortage of things to do! Some lunchtimes I go into town to go swimming and diving - it's good to have a break in the middle of the day. After work I've usually got sport of some kind - the choice of sport depends on the season and the weather - and then I meet up with friends, or go to dance class, or play the guitar.

Pet project
Spying on bubbles in the ocean. Just after a wave breaks, there are loads of bubbles and they're changing really really quickly. They're stretching and squishing and bumping into each other and breaking into smaller bubbles and they're doing all too fast for us to see directly. But whenever they break up, each new bubble makes a "ping" sound, and if you hear it you can say something about those new bubbles. I use high-speed photography both in the lab and in the ocean to follow bubbles forming, and acoustics to listen to the same events. One day we'll understand enough just to be able to listen to a wave and know how many bubbles are in it. And then some clever climate modeller will be able to use that to work out how much carbon dioxide those bubbles are carrying down into the ocean.

Freetime
Sport is the background for everything else that I do. In winter, I play badminton and hockey and I swim regularly. In summer, I run and cycle instead - I'm just starting to do triathlons. And the springboard diving goes on all year round. I love to dance and, although I've done mostly salsa and rock'n'roll, I'm now starting to learn to ballroom dance. My friends are very important to me and we spend a lot of time together, cooking dinner, playing ultimate frisbee, going out and also doing not-a-lot (the best bit because we're all very busy!). I also enjoy reading - mostly political and social history but everything else as well.

Burning ambitions
I don't have any one ambition that drives me, but I'd like to be happy and lead an interesting life. It would be nice to contribute as much as I can to science, but there are lots of other aspects of my life that I don't want to ignore. The best bit of life is not knowing what will happen next!

The best thing is...
The people in my life, both at work and outside. I'm lucky because I have so many amazing friends who are always keen to try out new things and are always there to help when it's not going so well.

Regrets?
No big regrets, but maybe there are a few opportunities that I was too shy to take or that I thought I wasn't suitable for. If you don't try, you won't find out!

What do you love most about science and engineering?
Being able to play with the way the world is made, to poke it and prod it and test out my ideas to see whether I can work out the puzzle.

Name one quirky/crazy fact about you or your job.
When a bubble is made in a wave, it gets held under the water for a bit, and while it's there all sort of small aquatic plants and animals stick to it. When the bubble eventually gets back to the surface to pop and fizz, the popping process makes it mash up all those small things and spit them out into the atmosphere. And once they get there, all those bits of zooplankton offal can help clouds to form!