I am a full time medical student so although I felt a little like an imposter when I was invited to this interview I hoped I could give students a perspective on all the things they can achieve in the space sector. My main interest is Space Medicine, at the moment this takes the shape of a research interest or hobby alongside my studies but it has opened up so many doors and I feel very lucky to have joined such a niche yet supportive community. My first project was during my bachelors, for my end of year thesis I decided to try and design a surgery workstation to be able to operate in microgravity (a bold undertaking but my degree had an engineering angle and I saw there was very little research on this area). I was lucky enough to be given a lot of independence and met my supervisor Dr Kevin Fong twice for valuable advice. The project went well and I used it as a great ice breaker to reach out to anyone who worked in space medicine by sending it out on LinkedIn. Since then I also formed part of the Paraboladies team for the European Aerospace Challenge and we have researched commercial spaceflight and the medical considerations of this. We presented our work in Paris and have been able to travel to the IAC, ISDC and AsMA conferences in the US where I met incredible leading experts in space medicine and presented alongside astronauts. Currently I am working on a society I launched a year ago, the European Society of Extreme Environment Medicine (of which Space medicine is a sub-group alongside Diving, Humanitarian, Mountain and Expedition medicine) and enjoying this breadth of different specialties of medicine.

I was studying a physics based degree and loved my teaching on Space and medical physics, remembering my love for space as a child, but I struggled with the more abstract and mathematical topics. In my second year I started searching for areas that would bring together space and medicine (after listening to a podcast about space biology) and found the aptly named Space Medicine. I then signed up to a module on Space Medicine and Extreme Environment Physiology (led by Dr Kevin Fong and Dr Dan Martin at UCL) and fell in love with the topic. This led me to choosing the slightly unusual thesis topic and the rest is history. A funny anecdote is that I was contacted by Adidas as a they were looking for a Londoner who wanted to go to Space and they filmed an advert for some spacey trainers at my house and in my neighbourhood!

The main advice I’d give to any student looking at getting involved in the space industry is to not let imposter syndrome hold you down. You have unique ideas and perspectives that can always add value and in my experience the rest of the community appreciate this. Reach out to mentors (LinkedIn is great) with specific questions or a research idea (it’s unlikely the classic “do you have a project for me” will interest them as many people ask this). Find something that interests you and run with it, there are so many resources and free societies on the internet (twitter is also a favourite platform of space enthusiasts) that you can really educate yourself to a high level on a niche subject. Most importantly, have fun! Go to conferences (there are many grants you can find for students) and meet fascinating people.