Profile

I like to be busy!

I love sharks!

I have two boys:

A 5 year old, Maks, and a 1 1/2 year old, Forest.

My main hobbies are:

• Triathlon (long distance): Swimming, cycling and running
• Ultra running (i.e. running further than a marathon)
• Martial arts training (mostly at home as I have been practicing karate since the age of 12)
• Walking in the beautiful local forest

I am also currently waiting on my application to volunteer for the local lifeboat because I spent around 7 years volunteering and working for the RNLI and I really miss it. I also love the feeling of helping others and the excuse to spend time on the water myself for training.

I love my work and I’m passionate about the marine environment so I love getting outdoors and especially on the coast. We have a couple of SUPs and I will often take one out with my two boys on the front. (My 1 1/2yr old will often fall asleep on top of it whilst I paddle!!)

I also volunteer with a local school for deaf children as an employment adviser and I love being able to share the students enthusiasm for the future and help them navigate their next steps.

I have two hats:

I am Research Engineer working to reduce the risk to seafarers by improving our understanding of welding, corrosion and the creatures that grow on ship’s hulls (biofouling) doing a PhD at the University of Bristol.

I am an Innovation, Research and Development Engineering working at Silverstream Technologies, helping to develop technology that uses bubbles underneath ships to reduce the amount of fuel that they need to burn! 🙂

From Monday – Wednesday I work for Silverstream Technology as the Innovation, Research and Development Project Engineer. I am really lucky because within this role I get to help the company plan experiments and develop the technology which reduces the amount of fuel that a ship has to burn! This is great as it means I’m working towards making shipping more environmentally sustainable.

Silverstream technology is best described by the videos on their youtube channel:

Silverstream Introductory Video

Basically, we are making air bubbles underneath the bottom of ships so that the ship is sailing on a carpet of air (instead of having to push over a carpet of water). If you know how much easier it is to walk in air compared to walking in the swimming pool, you will understand why this means that the ship will need less fuel when it is sailing on top of a carpet of air.

For me, this role involves planning testing schedules at water tunnel testing facilities, analysing vessel operational profiles and collaborating with other technologies who are all aiming to make shipping more sustainable.

On Thursdays and Fridays I concentrate on my PhD research at the University of Bristol. My research is looking at the interaction between:

1. The difference ways we can weld metal (welding procedures)
2. The different animals and plants that grow on metal when it is in the sea (biofouling)
3. Corrosion (rusting)

This is important because the corrosion of metals makes the metal less strong and therefore more prone to breaking….This is not what you want when you ship is made of mostly metal and you are floating in the middle of the ocean with a big storm brewing up!!

My week is split between two roles (and being a mum) so every day is different really.

Monday: I log into my Silverstream computer early in the morning to catch up from the end of last week and spend the day working on research and development projects that use bubbles underneath ships to help them move through the water more easily and therefore burn less fuel. I love working on these projects that help make shipping more sustainable and better for the environment.

Tuesday: Another Silverstream day, except that on Tuesdays I travel by train into London and spend the day working in the office with the rest of the product development team. This is a great day for team work and catching up and also a great excuse to go for a run in Hyde park at lunch time!

Wednesday: My final Silverstream day of the week where I make sure I close off all my tasks for the week and hand over any longer term tasks to other team members for the end of the week.

Thursday: This is my main experimental day for my PhD research. Usually I will head into Bristol University early in the morning and use one of the microscopes or fatigue equipment to carry out my experiments. Sometimes this means using a scanning electron microscope to look at detail at one of my metal samples and other times its using big machines to measure how many times I need to vibrate the metal before it breaks.

One Thursday every month I travel down to Plymouth to carry out my measurements on the metal that I have in the sea down there. This involves pulling the metal out of the water, photographing the animals that have grown on it and the corrosion that has occurred and then weighing them. It’s awesome to be by the sea again and really interesting to see the animals on the metal and the wonderful colours that the metals turns into when it corrodes.

Friday

Friday is another research day but I usually spend it at home so I can do my work early in the morning and then spend the afternoon with my two boys (when the older one comes home from school).