The Oxford Scientist

Hanah Ibrahim, Year 13, Pimlico Academy, London Currently living underneath the world’s oceans is a vast and deep microbial biosphere that extends hundreds of metres into the seafloor. Dr Karen Lloyd, a marine microbiologist from the University of Tennessee, is fascinated by this deep-sea world and the microbes that inhabit it, so has spent years…

Eleanor Baird, Year 12, Bablake School, Warwickshire Imagine attempting to conduct research with a 4-hour time bomb counting down in your subconscious each day. For Rabia Salihu Sa’id, a Nigerian physicist and professor of atmospheric and space-weather physics, this is a reality. Bayero University in Nigeria, where Sa’id does her research, provides her with just…

Jessie D’Urso, Year 12, Nonsuch High School for Girls, Surrey “In every moment of the day, in the middle of any day, I can become newly engaged with the world. Newly competent. There’s so much to discover!” This quote conjures to mind someone brilliant: Darwin, Hawking or Einstein, plotting their radical theories. Yet these are…

Hannah Glendell, Year 12, Cults Academy, Aberdeen We live in a world of data. Every day numbers are thrown at us from all directions: teenagers have anxiety, people will get cancer, people have died of Coronavirus. But says who? Numbers swirl around us; wildly exaggerated, spreading like Chinese whispers. The pandemic has exacerbated this problem….

Louisa Neill, Year 11, Downe House School, Berkshire Professor Francesca Happé is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at King’s College London, and for the last 30 years she has been studying autism, especially in women and the elderly. She is also a Fellow of the British Academy, the Academy of Medical Sciences and is a…

Ruby Keith-Smith, Year 12, Bristol Grammar School Out of the 100 million people who have ever lived on Earth, an estimated half of them may have died from malaria. Malaria is still responsible for over 3000 African children’s deaths per day, being particularly prevalent in low-income communities who lack basic necessities such as proper sanitation,…

June Hyun, Year 10, Harrow School, Middlesex An estimated 25% of all marine life depends on coral reefs at some point in their lifecycle. Reefs support over 500 million peoples’ livelihoods, pump $3.4 Billion into the US economy and prevent $4.3 Billion in flood damage around the globe. They are also dying quicker than ever…