Profile

Hi everyone, my name is Luke Townsend and I’m from Chorley in Lancashire. I currently live in Sheffield where I moved recently for my new job as a postdoctoral researcher in nuclear science.

When I’m not doing my research, I love to be outdoors running or walking. You’ll often find me running around the Peak District or in a local race. I also love watching local football teams play when I can, with Hallam FC being my new local team.

I also love music, with me and my fiancée listening or playing music (guitar and drums) whenever we can and going to see bands live at local gigs.

I also started learning the Japanese language in my spare time last year which has proven very useful as my current research project involves working with colleagues in Japan!

My research is broadly on how different types of radioactivity interact with the environment. It’s important to understand how any radioactivity may move through the environment so that we can keep people safe.

During my PhD, I studied how radioactivity from nuclear waste disposal may interact with and move through the environment. My work was focussed on this area so that we can determine whether the current plan for radioactive waste disposal (which involves building a really complicated facility deep underground) is safe.

My current research project aims to understand how the radioactivity present in the environment from the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster is behaving and how it may impact people. This is important work as we need to know where the radioactivity is within the environment so we can clean it up!

As a postdoctoral researcher every day is different for me and this makes my job really interesting and exciting. Not only do I get to do experiment in a lab (including making glass in a REALLY hot oven!), I get to meet and work with some really cool scientists from all around the world (including the USA, Europe, and Japan), and do lots of data analysis to understand what my experiment results mean.

I usually get into work at around 8 am where I’ll start some experiments for the day. Whilst my experiments are on, I can then do some meetings and data analysis. This year, I’ve also started teaching some undergraduate courses where I teach University students about nuclear power.

In the afternoon, I will do some data analysis on my experiment from the morning which might including taking some cool pictures with something known as an electron microscope (this is like a microscope you may have seen/used before but it lets me look at even smaller details on my samples).

When I get home at around 5:30 I tend to go for a run with my running club. I find it’s really helpful to keep fit and healthy whilst doing research as it also helps me relax after a long day of science.