Question: How does your work benefit us pupils?

Suze Kundu answered on 13 Jun 2011:

Hi Angharad!

The work that researchers are doing probably seems like a really unrelated thing to your everyday lives. To be honest, a lot of people here are quite lucky because the research that they are doing (including my research) is such that they can see the direct benefits of it, should the experiments work.

With my research, if the method of making hydrogen is good enough and cheap enough, this could replace petrol a few years down the line. I don’t know how old you are, and whether you’ll be driving any time soon, but trust me, petrol is expensive! If we could find a way of replacing petrol with a cheaper fuel, we would all save money. The wealth of different countries all around the world would change, and as there would be fewer people needed in oil drilling, and more people within the renewable energy sector, the types of jobs might change.

With things like medical research, this would obviously effect us all, whether it is finding a cure or finding a vaccine to prevent a disease from affecting the human population. Materials research would change the way we build things, and perhaps push the boundaries of engineering and architecture, allowing us to build bigger, stronger, better things.

Even though research sometimes seems far away, it’s really relevant to us all!

Is there any area of research that you’re particularly excited about, or are you still waiting to see what else is out there?