I also knew that if I was to do a PhD, then my supervisor was the only one that I was willing to do one with. I knew the supervisor well enough to be confident I would make it through the PhD, and that there was a group surrounding my research to work collaboratively in this area. Without either of these I wouldn’t have taken the research position.

My PhD project was about Novel Methods of Base Pressure Drag Reduction (making SUVs have square rear edges, without behaving like they have square rear edges). This ultimately ended up looking at adaptive systems tested in a quasi-steady way.

For me, the best thing about studying a PhD at Loughborough was studying with the group of people. There were eight (I think) people studying similar things using the same equipment. There was a fantastic pool of knowledge there to work through problems and issues that we faced. Having a pool of supervisors to run ideas through with was also a significant benefit.

Aside from the people, the large wind tunnel facility was primarily for PhD students and their projects, with a good amount of equipment to use and test with. It was incredibly hands-on, with no dedicated support (apart from each other) for the more scientific side of the projects, meaning that we each learnt a huge amount about the systems and sub-systems. Whilst this did distract from analysis of the aerodynamics, it was hugely beneficial to each of us, making each of us much better engineers and aerodynamicists.

All three wind tunnels were available to me for use in my project, although I only sought to use the large wind tunnel as all our equipment was designed around it.

The most interesting thing for me during my undergraduate degree was the trip to MIRA for a week of practical work. It was great to be able to apply the work in the lectures to the real-world data that we had defined the tests for. It was also fantastic to be able to use a full-scale wind tunnel to get a real appreciation for what small changes to an automotive shape can do to the resulting forces. Ultimately it was my experience in the wind tunnel at MIRA that made me decide I wanted to go into experimental aerodynamics, with a PhD the clearest way to do that from the automotive engineering course.