Profile

I love to cook and I will happily make everything from scratch – but it does have to be vegetarian! I live in Bristol with my partner. I just moved this year and I’m still finding my way around the city of my converted e-bike. One thing I discovered recently is a new Science Fiction book club – we just met to discuss our first book which was so much fun!

Climate Change is a very serious problem. It is happening because of the choices people make, and continue to make. We need to change these choices very quickly and by a very large amount. I am trying to understand how we can make that happen. The government doesn’t always want to spend money or make laws to solve these problems, so scientists have to find another way to solve them.

One suggestion is that we influence people. Education doesn’t always work. How many times have you been told to eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day? Did you listen to them? If you don’t like fruit, I bet you didn’t! If people don’t like fruit, they are much less likely to eat it. It has to be the easy, attractive, and the right time to do it. That’s what I try to do with environmentally friendly choices. I am trying to find ways (that don’t cost anything!) to make it easy, attractive, and the right time to do it.

One idea is that we make it the cool thing to do. What if your football club started encouraging everyone to cycle to a match – would you do it? What if you had a job and they asked you to cycle? If you start cycling are you more likely to make other changes – like eating less meat? Will you spread that behaviour to your friends? Will they start changing? Together we can all make a difference!

My day really depends on the study I am working on. I do a whole range of work. Sometimes I am interviewing people, other times I am collecting Tweets and using machine learning to decipher what lots of people are saying quickly. I love the freedom of my job and it’s so cool that I get to learn all this stuff!