• Question: How has your research affected your field of work

    Asked by shadowknight96 to Adam, Geoff, Rob, Sheila, Suzie on 21 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Geoff McBride

      Geoff McBride answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      It’s early days with my current research. I’d like to get a working system to enable the ‘user’ to make complex decisions are understand all the risks they take in making those choices.

    • Photo: Adam Tuff

      Adam Tuff answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      Interesting question – at the moment my research is still in the early stages, and I’m still analysing it. Hopefully next year I will be able to publish my results, and this will add more information to the picture of how these stars work! This should mean other scientists will be able to use the data for calculating how fast reactions occur, and will help us understand some isotopes of elements better.

    • Photo: Sheila Kanani

      Sheila Kanani answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      Great question, it is always important to make sure you remember why you are doing what you are doing!
      Doing a phd is like putting in one piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Alone, that piece means nothing, but in the right place, it can be enlightening!
      I am still working on my piece of the jigsaw, but once it is done (hopefully in October) I really hope that my research will affect my field of work.
      At the moment I am looking at the flow of plasma, charged particles, and how it moves in the Saturn system. At the moment scientists think that cold plasma moves away from Saturn and hot plasma moves towards Saturn. We have seen evidence of the hot plasma, but no one has ever seen evidence of the cold plasma….until now! I think I’ve seen this cold plasma moving outwards, now all I have to do is prove it to everyone else! 🙂

    • Photo: Suzie Sheehy

      Suzie Sheehy answered on 14 Mar 2011:

      My previous research in my PhD overturned the experts opinions as I proved that the design they were pursuing for a particle accelerator for cancer treatment couldn’t work! I then went on to come up with a new design which was work, so I think that is a pretty big impact in my field!

    • Photo: Robert Simpson

      Robert Simpson answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      My PhD thesis was about a possible evolutionary diagram for stars. We had the idea that if you make a simple plot of mass against radius for very young stars then you can predict how they will evolve based on such a diagram. If that theory is supported by future evidence it will have been a very cool discovery.

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