Profile – Sustaining Health Zone

Education:

West Bridgford Comprehensive & 6th Form 2000-2007; Imperial College London 2007-Present
Qualifications:

GCSE’s: 3A*, 4A, 3B; A-Level: A(Maths), B(Chemistry), B(Physics); 1st class MEng Materials Science & Engineering; PhD (hopefully very soon)
Work History:

3 month internship at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland, various teaching roles involving maths/computing and a lot of time serving in pubs, restaurants, cafes and bars
Current Job:

PhD student in the Department of Materials

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Ultraviolet (UV) light is the reason you get a sun tan on holiday, and why you burn if you’re not careful and wear sun cream; it’s the same as visible light (red, green, blue, etc.), but has a much higher energy and you can’t see it with the naked eye.

Sun burn occurs when the cells in our skin get too much UV and are damaged. The same things happen to bacteria (the cells in dirty water that can make us sick if we drink it), and so we’re trying to blast these bugs with enough UV to kill them and make the water safe.

I’ve written a simulation which models how light travels through water, trying to get the maximum brightness throughout a treatment chamber. When we know what the best design is we build it and start making dirty water safe to drink.

We’re focussing on using LEDs (light emitting diodes) as our UV source because they’re small, cheap, strong and long lasting.
My Typical Day:

I test loads of designs for water treatment devices and use my simulation to determine which is the best.
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By looking at how evenly each bit of the treatment chamber is lit we can get the most efficient design and make the most of every bit of light.
What I'd do with the prize money:

I’ve just started working to develop a physical materials library where we can showcase weird and wonderful materials, so the money would be great to help towards that 🙂

Richard Simons