Thomas Watts Email & Phone Number

Armagh, Northern Ireland

My responsibilities include testing pre-release versions of the software, ensuring that the app ran as intended and was intuitive for the user. I provide feedback on any problems encountered and give suggestions to the main developer in a manner that ensures the implementation of fixes and improvements is as simple as possible.

School Of Physics And Astronomy

While working with the Outreach Team of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds I have been part of a team of students that visits school in Yorkshire to help run physics events. We will often take equipment, such as the departments inflatable planetarium, and run workshops to explain the work that is going on in physics research. We will answer questions and encourage students to consider studying MAPS subjects. We also have schools visit the university and run events and workshops in the department so they get to experience university life.

My responsibilities include engaging with potential undergraduate students and their parents, answering questions they may have about studying physics at university, or university life in general. I also give tours around the campus and demonstrate physics experiments.

As a Peer Assisted Learning mentor, I meet first year physics students once a week to help them understand the content they are being taught in lectures and support them in finding new ways to solve problems they may be experiencing. As a PAL mentor, I also help new students with difficulties they may be having with settling into university life, by both sharing my own experiences and tips, and suggesting where they could go for further help.

After second year study of my undergraduate study, I worked on an 8 week research internship within the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds, studying massive star formation. During the placement I used data from the MOPRA telescope to study the statistical relationships between young stars. To do so I wrote python code to transform the raw data into a usable form, as well as correcting for null data values and Doppler shifts. I was then able to perform principal component analysis on the stars using the R programming language to probe the statistical similarities between the young stars.The work I did over the placement will be used by future summer intern students to support further research into the formation of massive stars.

As President, I was responsible for developing, as part of a team, the Society's future direction and arranging Society events. During my first weeks as President, the Society saw membership rise by nearly 10x on the previous year, and a significant amount of interest from people at freshers fairs and introductory talks.

As one of the founding committee members of the Society, I was part of the team who gathered enough support to make a proposal to Leeds University Union that an astronomy society would be a valued addition to the Union's list of societies. As Treasurer, I was responsible for ensuring the financial stability of the Society in its first year. The following year, I took the knowledge gained about the running of societies and was pleased to take on the role of President of the Society.

Master’S Degree, Physics And Astrophysics

Activities and Societies: Founding Treasurer of AstroSoc (2014-2015), President of AstroSoc (2015-2016)Year 1: Physics 1 - Mechanics.

A-Levels

Activities and Societies: House Prefect 2012Grade B in GCE Physics Grade C in GCE Chemistry and GCE Mathematics