| Previous Paul Award winners |
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2018 Alex Scrimshire, Sheffield Hallam University
Oliver Alderman Paul award winner 2011 It took a few years of practice giving talks at the annual SGT meetings, but in 2011 I was thrilled to be awarded the Paul Award for best presentation in the New Researchers Forum. My talk was based around my doctoral research using neutron scattering and other techniques to study the atomic scale structure of lead oxide bearing glasses. The award meant a lot to me given that, at school, and even as an undergraduate, the thought of having to stand up and say anything in front of a group of people had filled me with dread. Practicing the talks beforehand really helped, and now I actually relish speaking about my work to an audience – it’s a great opportunity to share work you’re passionate about. In fact, giving a similar talk at the Physics of Non-Crystalline Solids conference in 2012 ultimately led to a job offer, which I accepted, to join Materials Development Inc. (MDI) in Chicago. MDI build and develop levitators for studying liquids in ‘containerless’ conditions. This is ideal for making novel glasses and studying their progenitor supercooled liquids – and I was fortunate enough to do so using synchrotron x-rays and pulsed neutrons. I’ve since moved back to the UK and work as an instrument scientist at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, near Oxford, as a member of the Disordered Materials Group. This has exposed me to a whole host of experimental methods for interrogating liquids and glasses, and much more besides. Dean Whitaker Paul award winner 2010
For the Paul award I presented our work looking at atomic level structural transformations as you apply very high pressures to glasses. We made precisely machined pellets of special GeO2 glass a few mm in diameter then squashed them under huge pressures (up to 20 GPa). We took these to the ISIS neutron source and recorded neutron scattering patterns as we squashed them. There was then a complicated and difficult data correction procedure where we were looking for very tiny differences in the signals between different sample runs which would allow us to figure out the positions of the atoms and demonstrated the transition from tetrahedral to octahedral shaped arrangements as the glass squashed.
Back when I started my PhD I was a bit of a nervous public speaker. I took the opportunity to practice wherever I could and the SGT conference gave me the chance to talk to a friendly and diverse audience. It was also good to watch how others gave talks too, picking up on different styles and working out what would work for me. Having the award attached to this gave a bit of an incentive for me to concentrate on the skill of speaking, choosing content to suit the audience and think a bit about style. Winning it certainly gave me a bit of confidence that I wasn’t quite as bad a public speaking as I thought.
After PhD I changed career track a little. I went on to teach in a secondary school for a year; which certainly killed off any remaining nervousness about speaking to groups! I then started a role as an engineer at UKAEA working on a tritium handling plant at JET; I’ve designed some science experiments and parts of plant but my main focus was on control system programming. After a bit of moving around, I ended up back at UKAEA as group leader for the H3AT Control and Instrumentation Group (H3AT stands for Tritium Advanced Technology of course!). I manage a team of engineers who help to design and manage the systems that control our plants (both software and hardware). I’m lucky enough that I can keep my hand in doing some control system programming and leading some of the technical side of what my team do, but much of my work involves using all of those soft skills in communication, negotiation and influencing that I picked up during my PhD, teaching and other opportunities I took on specifically to practice and build soft skills.
My talks now (as often happens as your career progresses) are almost always to mixed audiences of key decision makers, technical specialists in the field and technical specialists from other fields. I still use the same principles that I developed during my PhD (and honed in my SGT and other talks): Figure out what you’re going to say before making detailed slides, only try to get one or two key points across and make sure you know what they’re going to be, keep the slide count low with clear and concise slides, practice a few times, go with the style you’re comfortable with and keep trying out different tweaks to see if it works for you. 2009 – Mr Jeremy Soulié, Clermont Université 2008 – Robert Moss, University of Kent After my undergraduate degree I studied towards a PhD in physics at the University of Kent. My PhD was an investigation into the structure of metal-doped phosphate-based glasses, all of which were of interest for biomedical applications. These glasses were developed to be bioresorbable (dissolve and disperse in the human body) for use as temporary supports following surgery, for example. By introducing metals such as silver, copper or zinc, it was possible to impart an intrinsic antimicrobial effect to serialise the wound site and reduced the number of patients requiring antibiotics later on. 2007 – Emma Barney,University of Warwick 2007 was the first year that the Paul award had been run and, I must be honest, I don’t think I knew there was a presentation prize to be won until I arrived at the venue. My presentation was based upon one of the chapters of my PhD thesis, the structure of sodium tellurite glasses. I still find tellurite glasses fascinating and, though I have moved into other areas of research too, I am still working on them to this day. |
