Profile

Not many people think about these things, but there is an awful lot of Chemistry keep aircraft up in the sky!

As we as the fuel, every type of air craft has a number of lubricants, such as engine oil, keeping them running smoothly. Every time you fly away on holiday there will be a special oil design to keep the engines turning, as well as a hydraulic fluid keeping the flaps working and grease for the wheels when you land. I work on all of these and if you’ve been on a plane in the last few years, there is a good chance you would have flow on a product that I’ve worked on!

Each of these products is made in my lab using a mixture of special components to make it work perfectly every time! Unlike cars, if your airplane breaks down you can’t just pull over to the side of the road – so safety is a big part of what I do every day. Making sure everyone in my labs is safe and everyone flying on my products is safe.

There are many different parts to my job!

I research the best components for my products. I look at their chemistry and work out if they will be good at working in a particular environment.
I visit customers and users of the products. The best way to find out what I need to do is to speak to the people that use the products I develop.
Work in the labs – I spend a lot of time in the labs with my lab team working on new and exciting tests to push our products to the limits.

As a part of my job I get to travel a lot! I am actually currently living and working in Houston, Texas, in the USA! In two years I have visited Holland, Germany, Florida, Virginia, Washington and Ohio on business!