• Question: Whats the best thing you've done as a scientist? Did it affect society?

    Asked by glacierbunnys to David, Rebecca, Simon, Verity, Wei on 23 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Wei Xun

      Wei Xun answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Not yet! I’ve had a couple of papers published but there’s no way of tellingwhat’s come of it.

      However, the air pollution study I am working on will go to help politicians decide next year, how much air plution should be allowed to come from traffic, in order to minimise the harm done to people living in European cities.

    • Photo: Verity Nye

      Verity Nye answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      If you mean what is my best achievement I’d go with describing a new species because I see that as an honour and a privilege and I loved doing it. If you mean what is my best experience that has to be finding undiscovered hydrothermal vents and watching the video footage of them live on the ship as they were being recorderd on the seafloor; a real goose bumps moment. Neither have affected society as yet, although there was a lot of media interest.

    • Photo: David Armstrong

      David Armstrong answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      My biggest achievement so far is getting my PhD. None of the work is there has really made a massive impact so far, but it is being used by other scientists to investigate problems in areas including aerospace and nuclear power. Hopefully they will have a positive impact on society in the future though.

    • Photo: Simon Trent

      Simon Trent answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Recently, Ive started going into schools or school careers conventions and thats a great way to engage with kids and tell them about university, science and research. A lot of these kids werent really thinking about uni, or its unusual for them to do so, its I think I broke a few boundaries.

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