Profile

I  moved to Nottingham in 2012, since then I graduated with a degree in physics, got engaged then married, bought a house, and became a dad. I love watching the bake-off, and making banana and chocolate pancakes on the weekend. When I was at school I used to be really good at solving Rubik’s cube. My best ever time was 16.5 seconds. Now I it takes me ages to solve the cube – like 45 seconds!

Oh and I keep chickens.

After finishing 3 years at university doing physics I applied to become a clinical scientist in the NHS. It was really good. For 3 years I got paid to go round the hospital and learn all about how physics is used. I got to measure radiation levels from radioactive sources that are used to treat cancer. On my first day I accidentally spilled a tiny amount and we had to do a full decontamination of the lab!

Warning – if your squeamish maybe don’t read the following. I saw how doctors can use ultrasound to see the valves open and close inside people’s heart. Once they weren’t sure if someone had a ‘hole in the heart’ so they injected tiny air bubbles into the person’s arm. We watched them go round to see if the blood can pass through a gap between the left and right sides. I also got to see lasers being used break up stones inside someones kidney – we all had to wear glasses to stop the laser from blinding us if anything went wrong.

At the moment I’m doing a PhD. I’ve trained an Artificial Intelligence to look at a knee scan in patients with osteoarthritis. The AI predicts if the person needs to have knee replacement surgery, and can tell if there likely to have painful knees.  The picture below shows big hole in the persons knee cartilage caused by osteoarthritis. The 3D picture is made automatically, and used to predict if the person might kneed a knee replacement.

Often I get into work at 9:30, drink coffee (we have a fantastic machine and its free!), look at my emails. Then I read some articles as its really important to keep up to date with what others are doing in research.

I’ll spend a couple of hours working on my own, making pictures to explain data and share my research with others.

At the moment I’m testing a new MRI scanner which was really expensive. It cost millions of pounds. At the moment its all shiny and new.

I’m making sure images look good. And because MRI scanners are basically giant magnets I’m also involved in keeping everyone safe – things like scissors, coins, keys and chairs can become projectiles and fly into the scanner if there too close.