After her PhD, she chose to pursue an interest in making research more environmentally sustainable. She joined sustainability-focussed groups, such as the High Energy Physics, Cosmology, Astrophysics and Hadron and Nuclear Physics (HECAP+) Initiative that aims to reduce the environmental impact of those fields. She learned to evaluate the environmental impact of research and tried to carry out such an evaluation of her own PhD project. Despite finding this challenging, it inspired her to do more of this type of work, which led to her current role.
Hannah's role at ISIS is to evaluate the environmental impact of the whole life cycle of ISIS-II, from construction through its working life to decommission. This has included exploring areas such as implementing remote facilities to reduce user travel, comparing various designs of components and looking at improvements to the construction process. “Improving the environmental impact of ISIS-II will be a cumulative effect of small- and large-scale changes. What's really exciting is the potential for this to lead to new research. For example, concrete and steel used for radiation shielding has a huge environmental impact, so perhaps new materials for shielding, or ways to use less material, can be explored."
