Science and outreach with Anne Pawsey

Anne Pawsey has recently scooped the Very Early Career Physicist Award, given for excellence in scientific work as well as outreach. We catch up with her and talk outreach, awards and functional food.

How does it feel to receive the Very Early Career Woman Physicist Award? I'm extremely pleased to have won the award and very grateful to the committee who chose me. It's wonderful to get recognition for both my science and my outreach work at such an early stage of my career. I'm grateful to my supervisor Paul Clegg for all his support and for the enthusiasm of my fellow students who took part in the outreach events.

Tell us about the work that led to your nomination. I led the outreach programme for the Scottish Condensed Matter Doctoral Training Centre (CM-DTC) for the first two years of my PhD.

All the outreach activities were student led and as I was in the first cohort of students I was responsible for setting up and running the programme. The aim was to generate excitement around all the research of the centre, which includes everything from novel superconductors to the physics of bacterial motion. To do this we started small with workshops for school students and a collaboration with a high school science club and worked up to two weekend workshops at the National Museum of Scotland.

On the science side, I've been able to work very closely with colleagues who create computer simulations of the experiments I work on. The interplay between theory and experiment has been enjoyable and lead to new ideas for research for both parties.

You've recently finished your PhD – could you tell us about this? I studied colloids, (micron-sized particles), dispersed in liquid crystals. Liquid crystals are a phase of matter between a liquid and a solid; they flow like liquids but have a degree of order. This results in striking textures and unique properties for use in applications such as flat panel displays (LCDs) and sensors. The material’s key feature is that its molecules are sensitive to external influences such as temperature and electric fields.

Adding colloids to liquid crystals disturbs the liquid crystal's order and produces asymmetric interactions between the colloids. These composite materials display new and interesting physics as there are often competing length and energy scales. The asymmetric interactions can lead the colloids to assemble into structures which are not found in simple liquids.

I use various types of microscopes to image the resulting composite materials. I collaborate extensively with colleagues who create large computer models of these materials: by combining our efforts we are able to gain a fuller understanding of these complex systems.

What's next – what are you currently working on? I've just started a postdoc working for the Rowett Institute, University of Aberdeen to use soft matter physics techniques to create a functional food. I've started an outreach collaboration with a chef, we have a show explaining physics using food based demonstrations and I hope to be able to tie together my research and outreach.