Profile

Outside of work I have two girls (2 and 5) and a husband that keep me on my toes. Family time is very important to me and we love spending our free time exploring new places, being outside, camping and just spending time together. My husband and me are mild adrenaline seekers and are often out looking for our next adventure.

Although I was born in the UK, I moved to France at a very young age and completed the majority of my education in a French based school. I regularly go back to see friends and family living there.

I currently work at the School of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Leeds as a Teaching fellow. My role is very varied and I get to work on many really interesting projects.

The main objective of my role is to teach our students everything I know about Food Science to prepare them to become talented Food Scientist and pursue careers within the Food Industry. A lot of my teaching focuses on skills development required for industry as well as the science behind the hands on laboratory classes. I am also the crazy scientist that helps design practicals for our courses.

Along side my teaching, I am able to conduct research around best teaching practices. I am currently working with a team of people to design virtual reality teaching tools to allow students to learn certain aspects of Food Science through immersive headsets and games.

I am also the Outreach office, which means I get to come and engage with younger students to get them excited about STEM subjects and introduce them to the world of Food Science, which unfortunately does not have much visibility as a career route, which is unfortunate as it is such an exciting place to work !

Prior to working at the University I did work in industry – I will talk about later in my profil

These are the types of activities I might encounter during a work day:

• Teaching: I could be delivering teaching either in large lecture theatres a or in smaller groups through group work, or delivering a laboratory practical (chemistry lab or Food pilot plant.
• Marking assessments
• Student support: Its great that I get to work so closely to students and support them during their time at the University and help them develop its career ready graduates !
• Attending meetings, I currently lead nation wide meetings so this is a great opportunity to met new people and exchange ideas.
• Project work: I could be working with project student on their research projects, or conducting my own research around how to improve teaching strategies
• Factory visits: I work very closely with Industry to keep up to date with manufacturing process and so this requires me to visits factories regularly.
• Conferences: Some days I will attend conferences to find out more about certain topics
• Outreach activity: Host workshops for young students to introduce them to Food Science as a subject area. These are a lot of fun as we get to make foods like smoothies, ice cream and cakes and understand the science behind these.