Profile
Rachel Edwards
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About Me:
I’m a physicist, and I do research into how to use sound waves to keep things safe. I teach university students about how different materials behave, and how to do electronics. I have two small kids and love making them new clothes with things like space unicorns on them.
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I’m a physicist! I have worked all around the world playing with the world’s largest magnets, but returned back to the Midlands to become a lecturer at the University of Warwick. I’ve done experiments on tiny specks of superconducting material, small magnets, and long lengths of railway track.
I live in Coventry with my husband and our two children (aged 5 and nearly 1), plus many cuddly toy dogs. I love juggling and sewing, and cartoons – and I read Beano every week! I have a different Spongebob t-shirt for every lecture I give.
I’m really short – I’m about the size of an 11-year old. This means I get away with being very over-enthusiastic about science when I’m teaching. It also makes it fun visiting schools, and showing them that scientists come in all shapes and sizes.
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My pronouns are:
she/her
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My Work:
I invent new ways of using sound to make the world a safer place. I measure how sound bounces off different objects, and use this knowledge to find problems like cracking in railway tracks.
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Have you ever shouted into a cave or a large echoey room, and listened for the echoes? That’s what I do! Except I use ultrasound, which is sound that’s such a high note that we can’t hear it. If you measure how long it takes for the echo to come back to you, and you know how fast it has travelled, you can work out how far it travelled. This means you can do things like finding out how far away the back of the cave is – or, if you send sound through something like a metal pipe or a bit of railway track, you can find out where there are any problems like cracking.
My research groups likes finding new ways of using sound to find things, but also new ways of making or listening for sounds. At the moment we’re using liquid crystals, which are a really unusual material, to make a paint that lets you “see” sound.
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My Typical Day:
I start the day with getting myself and two kids ready and out of the door. I start work around 9:30, and may spend my day doing teaching, or experiments, or writing papers about what we’ve found out with the experiments. I may have meetings with people across the university to encourage them to work more with the public. At 5pm I start the nursery and school pickups!
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My morning is a frantic rush of getting one child off to school, and one off to nursery. Then I head over to my lab at the university. I spend some of my time teaching physics to our undergraduates, and at the moment I’m teaching about how different materials behave (like metals and semiconductors). If I’m lucky I’ll get to spend some of my time in the lab doing experiments, or thinking about what we can invent next.
I spend some of my day talking with my PhD students about what they’re working on. I write papers to tell other researchers about what we’re doing, and write applications to get in money to do more research.
Sometimes I get to go and visit a school to tell people about how fun science can be. I have a second job at the university which is encouraging all of our researchers to go and talk with the public about what we do, and to see how they can work with the public to help them to do their own research. I finish at about 5pm so I can get to nursery and after school club before they close!
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I’d use it to make more experiments to take out to schools. It’s always much more fun to take some equipment and show people how great science is, rather than just telling them! I’d love to make a set of experiments for learning about how rollercoasters work.
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Education:
I went to 7 different schools while growing up, as we moved around a lot. They were all state schools, and in a mixture of large towns and small villages. There are gaps in my education from things I missed, but having to catch up each time we moved taught me a lot about learning.
Then I was given a chance to study at Oxford, and took it. It was a gamble and took a while to get used to, but worked out okay. I stayed there to do a degree in Physics, and then a PhD.
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Qualifications:
GCSEs, A-levels, then MPhys (4 year physics degree) and a DPhil (PhD)
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Work History:
Circus tutor at summer camps 😀
Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Florida, USA (just down the road from a pond with alligators in it, and the bat houses)
Postdoctoral researcher, then lecturer, at the University of Warwick
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Current Job:
Reader in Physics (senior lecturer!) and Associate Academic Director of the Warwick Institute of Engagement
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Employer:
University of Warwick
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Overenthusiastic short physicist
What did you want to be after you left school?
It varied. I wanted to be an artist, then an astronaut, then when I ended up too short to be an astronaut I decided to be an architect. Then I left the a-jobs and decided to try science instead. If I couldn't go to space, I could at least learn about it!
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Not really, I was too busy living in a world of my own.
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
I would probably be making things - maybe sewing, or maybe engineering.
Who is your favourite singer or band?
I love lots of music! I mostly listen to Radio 1.
What's your favourite food?
Either chocolate, or baked potatoes with cheese.
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
I'm pretty happy right now - my wish for a long time was to have a child, and now I have 2! But I'd really love to do the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures ones day.
Tell us a joke.
Two atoms were walking down the hallway when one of them said, "I think I lost an electron!". "Really?" the other replied, "Are you sure?". "Yes, I'm positive."
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