• Question: How long have you been doing your research, and how long do you plan to continue?

    Asked by jessw98 to Davie, Gemma, James P, James V, Nuala on 23 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: James Verdon

      James Verdon answered on 23 Jun 2012:

      Hi jessw98,

      I started doing research when I did a masters degree at Cambridge, that would’ve been 2005, and I’ve been doing that ever since. So that makes it 7 years, and it’s absolutely flown by!

      Most of that was in university, but I’ve also done a short stint at a couple of oil companies (oil companies do a lot of research relating to the earth as well, so that they can work out where the oil is).

      I’d like to carry on for the rest of my life if I can. I’m in a university at the moment, and my current contract lasts for another 2 years. After that I’ll have to look around and see what’s out there. University work is usually more interesting, but oil companies pay better, so I’ll have to make a decision based on that.

    • Photo: Nuala Carson

      Nuala Carson answered on 23 Jun 2012:

      Hey jessw98,

      I finished my undergraduate in 2009 and started research straight after that, so not that long really. I dont know how long i will continue doing it. I havent decided what i want to do with my life so how knows…

    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 24 Jun 2012:

      Hey jessw98, I guess I started researching in the summer of 2007, I worked on two projects, one was for my undergraduate dissertation (our big end of degree project) where I was reading through weather station reports (written by hand) and newspapers from the summer of 1783, when a cloud of gas from an Icelandic volcano called Laki came down over the UK and Europe for the whole summer changing the weather and climate and also causing crops to fail and people to die. At the same time I was working in a summer job in Edinburgh Airport, calculating how much rubbish they generated in the terminal building, and who produced it (passengers, shops, airport staff). I then had to write a report for the airport and made recomendations to the airport.

      The work I did that summer led me to realise that what I really enjoyed was research, so I’ve since then done a Masters which got me into climate modelling. I modelled a way of avoiding global warming called geoengineering I looked into whether we could release a lot of a sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to create stratospheric sulphates which would reflect incoming solar energy and so in the right amounts would remove the warming caused by the greenhouse gases we are emitting, but the idea of playing around with our atmosphere is very scary so we need to be very sure if it is safe, so I worked on that, which led me to be able to get to doing my PhD.

      I hope I can keep on researching for the rest of my career after my PhD. I have found that what I really enjoy is finding out new things and the work that goes into making a discovery.

    • Photo: Gemma Purser

      Gemma Purser answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      I have had jobs in science since i finished my degree in 2003 but I would say I have only been doing scientific research since I joined the British Geological Survey. I have been doing Carbon capture and storage research for the past 4 years. There is still so much more to learn and I really enjoy my job. I also think that the problems of the world demand for energy and the use of fossil fuels or nuclear fuels to supply this energy is unlike to change in the near future. I hope I can continue doing research for the rest of my working life.

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