Shane Ullman
To further a career in science I required research experience.
Why did you choose to pursue an honours degree?
I chose Honours because I realised I needed to have a competitive edge in the workforce, that to further a career in science I required research experience and because I was very interested in this area.
What attracted you to research at UTS Science?
I chose to do my Honours degree at UTS, so that I could work with academics that I have already known during my Bachelor's degree. I had done short term research at other universities and found it difficult to get to know people who could help with research.
Moreover, the School of Physics and Advanced Materials within the Faculty is a relatively small school, and I have already built close rapport with a lot of the academics and students. Sometimes, we even go for weekly beer and pizza just to talk about studies and research.
Describe your honours project and its aim?
I took part in some great work on nano films. I made computer simulations of atoms landing on a surface and forming nanostructures.
The difficulty was to understand how each atom behaves, as there are many forces at play on this scale. I then studied optical properties of the structures. The work has applications in anti-reflective coatings that could be applied to solar cells to allow more light in, or to LEDs to allow more light out. I love knowing that the technology I helped develop would hit the market some years down the track. Everything you do once you become a scientist has to be cutting edge, so you're discovering new and amazing things all the time.
Honours is a difficult year, but it is a whole new level of learning and I'm surprised at the way I've moved forward in leaps and bounds this year. What I thought was impossible at the beginning of the year is now almost trivial, and it gives me the motivation to take on even more challenges.
