Siân Lane is a research scientist with the Met Office, where she studies weather to help improve weather forecasts. She studied physics at university, followed by an MSc in meteorology. She loves the outdoor fieldwork and flying large balloons around in the dark! Here she tells us how excellent teachers at school and university inspired her in physics and encouraged her to step out of her comfort zone. Listen to Siân talk about the fascinating science of the weather in Cambridge Market Square on 2nd July, 12-3pm. Siân will put Weather under the microscope (microscope not included!) and we’ll be hoping for sunny weather!
SS: Siân , how did you get to your current position?
SL: I’ve been interested in the weather ever since I got involved with gliding as a teenager. When I went to university as an undergraduate I wanted to keep my options open, so I chose physics and philosophy rather than meteorology. When I graduated I decided that I would give this whole weather thing a go, so I did an MSc and then a PhD in meteorology at the University of Reading. My PhD project was sponsored by the Met Office, and looked at the ability of our forecasting models to simulate the microclimate of London. My project was part of a larger campaign to gather lots of observational data within London’s urban heat island, and working on this campaign gave me the experience and skills that I needed to get a job in the observations-based research department of the Met Office. I actually applied for my current position on the assumption that I wouldn’t get the job, but might get some interview practice. Imagine my surprise when I found myself starting a full-time job at the Met Office halfway through the third year of my PhD!
SS: What, or who, inspired you to get a career in science?
My parents have always been very keen to encourage my interests in whatever direction they happened to take me. As a child that included all sorts of things: painting, stamp collecting, My Little Pony… I remember having a chemistry set, and a variety of science-themed books, including one called “The Science Book for Girls: and Other Intelligent Beings”. I enjoyed science at school and had some really good physics teachers, which probably explains why I didn’t go into biology despite arguably being better at it than physics. I never really planned to become a scientist; I just kept doing what I found interesting until somehow I had spent nine years at university, and now it says “Siân Lane: Research Scientist” on my office door, so I guess I am one!
My PhD supervisor has also been a very important influence in my career so far. I originally applied to do a project with her because she taught the boundary-layer and micrometeorology course during my MSc course and she made it sound fascinating. She pushed me to develop skills that I never thought I would have; I used to be terrified of public speaking, and now I’m volunteering to stand on a box in the market square in Cambridge, talking to strangers about science!
SS: What is the most fascinating aspect of your research/work?
SL: I think that the most enjoyable part of my work is the fact that I get to go out in the field fairly often. That involves quite a lot of traipsing around the countryside, as well as wrangling stubbornly faulty equipment back into working order, and flying large balloons in the dark.
The most conceptually fascinating aspect of my work is probably that there is always another layer of complexity to deal with – every bit of progress we make makes our knowledge of what we’re studying a little less wrong, but there’s always more to understand.
SS: What attracted you to Soapbox Science in the first place?
SL: I’ve been involved in a few public engagement events before (schools visits, science festivals etc.) and this seemed like something a little different. I like the idea of talking to an audience without being able to use PowerPoint slides as a crutch – it’s a different challenge to the average scientific conference.
SS: Sum up in one word your expectations for the day – excitement? Fear? Thrill? Anticipation?
SL: My main concern is whether it’s going to rain!
SS: If you could change one thing about the scientific culture right now, what would it be?
SL: I would really like more scientific research to be freely available to the public. There are a lot of dubious stories in the traditional media and online that start with “Scientists have found…” and I would love it if people could easily check those claims for themselves. If news outlets would start citing papers properly as well, that would be even better.
SS: What would be your top recommendation to a female PhD student considering pursuing a career in academia?
SL: I’m not really an academic, given that I work in the Civil Service, but I would recommend talking to as many people as you can: fellow students, people at conferences, anyone in your field or outside of it. It’s a good way to find opportunities, and the more good professional relationships you have, the better! I think it’s especially important for female students to talk to other women in science. My female colleagues have been a great support network in what is still quite a male-dominated area, and seeing other women in more senior positions has really helped me to believe that I might be able to get there too one day.
Nikita Hari is a researcher, academic consultant and social entrepreneur from India with a vision to uplift society through education. She is currently pursuing her doctoral studies in Electrical Engineering in the Power and Energy group at University of Cambridge. Nikita is researching ‘Power Electronic Converters’ systems which can efficiently convert and conserve power and thereby help create a more sustainable future. She has also co-founded a social enterprise called ‘Favalley’ with the vision to turn slums into silicon valleys through engaging, training and matching marginalised youth to coding jobs. Nikita also tutors first year Engineering undergraduates from Churchill College. Nikita will be explaining why Electric Power know no gender in 
Sarah Bohndiek is a research group leader at the University of Cambridge. She is a physicist working at the interface with biomedical sciences, trying to improve our understanding of cancer and increase early detection of the disease. Sarah is also an enthusiastic teacher and mentor, STEM ambassador and science communicator. You can learn more about her research interests via her recent YouTube 
Nicola Smyllie is currently a post-doctoral neuroscientist working at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, where she also did her PhD. Here she tell Soapbox Science how she loves seeing the circadian rhythms in brain tissue and that she believes passionately that we need to encourage more girls to consider a career in science. Nicola will be talking about “Body clocks: rhythm of life” in 
Growing up there were two things I got real enjoyment from at school, one was science lessons, and the other was playing outside and getting muddy. Never did I think that would be able to pursue a career that involves
Decomposition (or breaking down into smaller parts) of organic matter, such as dead plant and animal remains, in soils is an important process in any ecosystem.Without it nutrients consumed by plants and animals while they are alive would have no way of returning to the soil after they die.
By Minh Tran, University of Oxford
Dr Dong Liu is currently an EPSRC postdoctoral Research Fellow and a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Brunel Research Fellow, based in the Department of Materials, University of Oxford. Her research is on the deformation and fracture of nuclear and energy materials. Dong will be standing on one of our soapboxes at our 
I came to the UK to study a Ph.D. at Bristol University (Department of Mechanical Engineering) six years ago after I finished my bachelor degree in Civil Engineering in Beijing. At Bristol, my project was to study a thin layer of ceramic coated on the surface of the turbine blades to help the cooling of these blades in the engine. It was simply fascinating to look at the different materials extracted from land-based gas turbines and the fancy ones from jet engines. My passion was to study how cracks grow in these coatings and their failure modes. Industry people were involved in the project and it was a great feeling when my research results were found useful for their practical problems. This has made me want to do more in this field, but I am now anxious not to confine myself to one particular area of endeavour.
After my Ph.D., I decided to interview for a project on materials related to nuclear power plants and from there I started my first post-doctoral job at Bristol University in the School of Physics. The material that I studied in this new project was called nuclear graphite, and it is used in the core of the current nuclear reactors in the UK; there are also international reactor designs that will use this material in the near future. I have learned a lot about this material over the last three years, and have presented my research on many occasions. I finally realised that although these materials work at high temperatures, but no one has been able to see in real time how they are damaged and fracture at these temperatures! With the motivation to see more and understand better these critical materials for nuclear power plant, I wrote proposals to EPSRC (The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) to apply for fellowships and to the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 for their funding to allow me to solve these problems. I got their kind support and started my research at Oxford University at the end of last year! Just in case you are curious about this project, here is the 
DL: As soon as I learned that Soapbox is hosting event in Oxford, I felt that it was my responsibility to join and contribute. This due to the following reasons. As long as I have been involved in Engineering and Science, I couldn’t help but notice how few girls are in these areas. When I went to international conferences, the leading researchers are invariably dominated by males. I believe that it is not because girls are not good at this, it is that their awareness of the excitement of being a scientist or engineer has not been awakened. If the younger generation can be shown this option, can feel this excitement, then hopefully our discipline will naturally become more populated by women scientists and engineers.
“Tick tock, tick tock”……..What do you think when you hear this phrase? A clock? Correct answer! But maybe not the traditional clock you have on your wall or wear on your wrist. Inside almost every cell in the body there are so called ‘biological clocks’ that help us tell the time from the inside. Your question now may be how? why? Good questions, and one we ‘scientists’ are still exploring.
If you think back to when you were a child, are your sleep/wake patterns different now? Once you hit that legal age of 18, did you spend your weekends out with friends in bars drinking the night away? It is well known that during the teenage years much of our weekends are spent catching up on sleep. Is this because of laziness? Or is there something else going on? If you are a parent, are you forced to wake up when you don’t want to because of your children?
I am a doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham and I am fascinated by clocks (both inside and out). I think it is imperative that we bridge the gap between academia and society and try to increase the awareness of science in the general public, not just to children but adults too. Soapbox Science is a great way to support female scientists who are trying to pave their way in a predominately male led profession. I hope to see you in 
I’m currently a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. My research investigates how babies respond to different stimuli, particularly focussing on painful stimuli. To do this we look at how babies’ brain activity changes in response to things like blood tests, which they need as part of their medical care. This research should therefore have important medical implications – babies who need intensive care can have lots of painful medical procedures, but because they cannot tell us whether they are in pain, it’s difficult for the medical team to know how to treat their pain. We hope that by understanding how the brain processes these stimuli we can improve pain treatment. From a more biological perspective, we look at very preterm babies up to babies who are born at term, and it’s fascinating to see how much the brain changes in this short space of time.
Verena Kriechbaumer is a researcher in the plant cell biology group at Oxford Brookes University. Her current project tries to get plants to clean up methane from soil such as ex-landfill sites or rice paddy fields. Why is that important and how is she going to do it…?Meet her at Soapbox Science in