Throughout school I always enjoyed STEM subjects and problem solving, so from an early age I discovered that an ideal career for me would be in engineering. After completing various placements at Transport for London and the NHS, I was attracted most to materials. Materials are at the centre of most engineering challenges and a key factor for most companies, as we are constantly striving to make things faster, lighter, cheaper, and more sustainable. To advance in research and industry, it is vital to have the ability to create and improve the performance of materials, presenting a strong need for materials graduates in most countries around the world.

Loughborough hosts some of the best research projects and scientists. Regardless of what you are interested in you are more than likely to find a professor with a high level of understanding in the topic. This gives students confidence to try and think outside the box and challenge concepts with the goal to improve.

I have enjoyed completing lots of projects while at Loughborough, but my favourite is my current MEng master’s project where I will be ‘Understanding dynamic damage of armour ceramic nanocomposites’. Ceramic nanocomposite is promising to become the next generation shielding material of body/vehicle armour. However, further understanding its damaging pattern and underpinned mechanism is necessary for improvement and optimization. I have been able to analyse and compare using a scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron spectroscopy (TEM) and Cr3+ Fluorescence spectroscopy silicon carbide (SiC) nanocomposites and baseline armour ceramics. This is a hard to come by experience and have really enjoyed drawing conclusions which can have significant real-world application.