Kathryn Thompson

My Story

I have spent most of my career in the gap between science and engineering - designing and building equipment for scientists, while bringing scientific insight to how machines need to work. I've done that in a variety of places, starting in further education and a university pharmacy department, then getting a PhD in building robots for nanochemistry, moving to the Netherlands to make improvements to fully-automated cow-milking machines, and then for the last few years, working in R&D for fruit sorting here in New Zealand. Looking back to when I left school, though, I would have had no idea that any of this existed or was possible. Even though I went to a former mining college in the industrial north of England, no-one ever suggested there was a use for all this stuff - engineering meant fixing cars, and the only scientists we knew were science teachers. That's maybe what I enjoy most about working in science and research, though - we don't know what's going to happen, so we get to try it and find out! 

Extra Curricular

Playing the drums, cycling, making clothes

Favourite Book

This week it's The Mars House by Natasha Pulley

Favourite Movie

Groundhog Day