Profile
Ellen Gill
My CV
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Education:
Holy Trinity School, Crawley 1998-2004. University of Exeter 2004-2007
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Qualifications:
Physics (with Quantum Mechanics and Laser Technology) Bsc Hons
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Work History:
Cavendish Nuclear 2007-present
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Current Job:
Shielding Specialist
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About Me:
I’m interested in everything and I think atoms are neat
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I live in the centre of Bristol, which is the best. I apologise to anyone who doesn’t live in Bristol.
Outside of work I have a lot of different hobbies as I’m terrible at doing nothing. At the moment I’m completely obsessed with swing dancing, but I also like making my own clothes, playing piano, drawing, walking, baking and reading. I also volunteer at Samaritans, which is just as important to me as my day job.
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Ultimately I’m responsible for keeping background radiation levels on nuclear sites safe and legal on a day-to-day basis, and I take that job very seriously, as does everyone else I work with. Radiation affects almost every imaginable aspect of running a nuclear power plant, so I’m always learning new things.
What I love about my field of work is how incredibly complex and fascinating radiation physics is when you actually get down to it. There’s so much to think about! Different radionuclides give off different types of radiation at different energies, and some of them decay (at different rates!) into completely new radionuclides again whereas some become stable. Then there’s the way radiation travels through different materials, how it can change different materials over time, and there’s the biological effects of radiation to consider, then there’s the extreme conditions found inside a reactor, unlike anything else on earth, and I could go on and on and on!
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My Typical Day:
Advising other people about what to do with all that radiation
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I work for a consultancy so we take on all sorts of work for customers around the world, but mainly the UK. The work can be anything from advising on how best to store drums of waste to evaluating multi-million pound building designs. On a good day I get to spend lots of time building computer models, which is the fun bit. Because they’re statistical models I actually code everything from scratch.
I also have to write up my work thoroughly enough to prove my models are good enough to base engineering decisions on. It’s much like writing up a science experiment in class, but with more detail.
I do spend a lot of time working with other disciplines, but mainly civil engineers and process engineers. Civil engineers design building structures, and more importantly, make sure all the massive shield walls I’ve modelled won’t fall down in real life. Sometimes the ideal shield wall won’t work in reality so we have to figure something out together. Process engineers decide how nuclear material is moved around site so I work very closely with them to make sure radiation isn’t building up to unsafe levels at any point. At this point in my career I’m a bit of a jack of all trades – I know a little bit about everyone else’s business so I can tell them how radiological issues will affect them.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
Run engineering/physics workshops in local schools
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Curious, enthusiastic, open-minded
Were you ever in trouble at school?
For a while I treated homework as an optional activity which, er, didn’t go down well.
Who is your favourite singer or band?
I can’t possibly choose! I veer wildly between genres. Right now I seem to be having a rock and roll phase.
What's your favourite food?
Whatever’s in front of me. Except coffee, which I can’t stand.
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
1)That I no longer need to sleep so I can get more done. I wouldn’t lose the ability to sleep though, I enjoy it too much. 2) An extremely nice library room to be added to my house. 3) Humanity figures out how to build commercially viable fusion reactors within the next year.
Tell us a joke.
Newton, Pascal and Young are playing hide-and-seek and it’s Young’s turn to count. As he closes his eyes and counts, Pascal runs off and hides, but Newton just stands there and draws a square around himself. Young opens his eyes, points at Newton and says “I’ve found you!”. “Incorrect.” says Newton “You’ve found one Newton per metre squared. You’ve found Pascal.”
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