From robots to space weather, vaccine development to harnessing big data for social good, for British Science Week 2022 we hear from four researchers from across the Faculties and School talking about their research and how they got into science.

In a series of short videos released this week via @uniofbath social media channels, Professor Cathryn Mitchell, Dr Asel Sartbaeva, Dr David Ellis and Dr Nathalia Gjersoe all share their stories.

Professor in Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Cathryn Mitchell, discusses her research into space weather. Studying space weather is the ability to understand and forecast how radiation and solar storms from the sun will affect our planet – with important applications for satellites and telecommunications, as well as energy grids.

Dr Asel Sartbaeva from the Department of Chemistry is working on revolutionary technology to enable vaccines to be stored and transported all the way around the world without refrigeration. Currently we lose about 50% of vaccines due to failures in cold store, which leads to millions of deaths to vaccine-preventable diseases. Asel’s work on vaccine enscillation has enormous potential to help.

Behavioural scientist Dr David Ellis from the School of Management researches the ways in which technology is changing the world, but also how that technology can be harnessed for social good. As David explains: “One of the most exciting things at the moment is that we have so many different bits of technology out there from mobile phones to wearable devices that produce huge amounts of data; I’m interested in what you can do with that data.”

Research interests for Dr Nathalia Gjersoe, developmental psychologist from the Department of Psychology, span diverse areas: from student wellbeing and anthropomorphism of robots; to climate change and how we communicate the climate crisis to children. She’s interested in the big philosophical questions about why people think the way they do and what makes them tick.

British Science Week is a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering, and maths, supported by UK Research and Innovation, taking place between 11-20 March 2022.