Isla Simpson, MPhys Astrophysics 2005
Research in Atmospheric Physics, Toronto
I graduated in 2005 with
an MPhys in Astrophysics and continued with a career in physics
research, although in a slightly different branch of physics - Atmospheric
Physics. I really enjoyed the four years spent in St Andrews. I
found that the relatively small size and friendliness of the department
allowed for a lot of interaction with the academic staff and this
led to me being given two opportunities to undertake summer research
projects in the department. These opportunities were certainly important
in encouraging, and allowing me to continue in research.
Although I thought I wanted to continue with physics research I
was unsure of exactly which subject to pursue. The course on transferable
skills for physicists allowed for an opportunity to undertake a
literature review project on a subject of your choice and I decided
to look into the effects of solar variability on the Earth’s
climate. I became very interested in the subject and with climate
change being a hot topic in the news, I decided that I wanted to
switch subjects slightly from Astrophysics to Atmospheric physics.
When looking into possible PhD projects, it became clear that there
were many opportunities for physicists in climate science and meteorology,
something that I was not aware of when starting out on my degree.
I was lucky enough to be offered a place in the Space and Atmospheric
Physics group at Imperial College London working on a PhD project
on the impact of solar variability on the location of the mid-latitude
jet streams. I hadn’t done any classes in atmospheric physics
before so the subject was completely new to me. However, I think
the background training I received in St Andrews made the transition
easier. In particular I was glad that I had opted for the Astrophysics
degree option as the practical Astrophysics classes had given me
a good grounding in scientific programming. Although I found that
extremely challenging at the time, it is something which I realise
now is essential for a career in most areas of physics research
and I am grateful to the training I received in that in St Andrews
for making the transition to a PhD student much easier than it could
have been.
I thoroughly enjoyed the three and a half years I spent at Imperial
as a PhD student. I was given many opportunities to travel and meet
other researchers in the field while I was there, including a short
placement at ETH Zurich as well as many conferences all over Europe.
By the end I felt sure that I wanted to continue in research and
knew that I wanted to stay in the field of climate modelling and
atmospheric dynamics.
I was offered a postdoc position in the department of Physics at
the University of Toronto and have now been there for two and a
half years. I work in a group that, along with government scientists,
is responsible for one of the state-of-the-art global climate models.
This model is used in predicting future climate changes associated
with ozone depletion and recovery and anthropogenic emissions of
greenhouse gases as well as in understanding the dynamics of climate
variability and climate change.
My particular area of research is in the mechanisms involved in
coupling between the stratosphere and troposphere as well as the
dynamics of tropospheric variability and biases that exist in climate
models when compared with the real atmosphere. My day to day work
involves designing experiments using general circulation models
to investigate these things, running the models using high performance
computers and then analysing the model output. Then, certainly one
of the perks is getting to go and present the work at conferences
in all sorts of places. This year I was also given the opportunity
to teach an atmospheric dynamics course of my own. This was extremely
nerve racking at first, and rather stressful, but in the end I really
enjoyed it and I hope I will get the opportunity to teach a class
again in the future.
While life in academic research certainly has its ups and downs,
I love the subject and I feel lucky be able to be able to spend
my days researching something that I find interesting and can also
have a direct relevance for society, while at the same time getting
to travel the world and see new places.
BDS
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