Profile

In the first half of the 20th century, Zeppelins (airships) were all the rage. Zeppelins were huge balloons filled with hydrogen, with a place for people to sit in stuck onto the bottom. To fill the Zeppelins, they needed a lot of hydrogen, and one of the ways they used to make it was by putting caustic soda, water and a chemical called ferrosilicon into big vats and heating it up until it started to make hydrogen. However, Zeppelins then fell out of fashion, and people weren’t that bothered about making hydrogen for a while, until hydrogen fuel cells started to become popular at the beginning of the 20th century. No one has really looked at the ferrosilicon method to see if it could be useful for modern devices, and so that is what I am doing.

Most of my time is spent in the laboratory doing experiments. However, I also help to teach undergraduate students in their practical sessions, and I write reports on the work I am doing. Sometimes I go to conferences, which are gatherings of scientists themed around a particular topic (such as hydrogen fuel cells, for example) and give presentations or display posters about my work.