Fengyuan Zhang: ‘I didn’t choose physics, physics chose me’
Fengyuan Zhang is a PhD student researching the manufacture of nanoscale materials. Specifically, she’s exploring how to nano-machine ferroelectric materials, which can be used to increase data storage capacity , using atomic force microscopy (AFM).
AFM is more commonly used to scan surfaces at a high resolution, but Zhang’s research group is discovering how to use it to fabricate nanostructures. If it works, this manufacturing method would be more accessible for researchers as it doesn’t require access to nano-fabrication facilities and expensive infrastructure such as a focused ion beam.
If you’re reading this without a background in advanced and emerging physics, I might have lost you already. There’s nothing simple about what Zhang is doing and the field she’s working in is so advanced that it is spawning new scientific terms as fast as it’s developing materials and techniques. Explaining this work to someone without at least a grounding in science is certainly a challenge.
But when the call went out for Soapbox Science participants in 2019, Zhang and a fellow student decided to give it a shot. At the time, she had never heard of Soapbox Science, which puts women researchers atop strategically placed soapboxes to talk science with the public.
“After we got training ‘on the box’, I started to realise I’d need to speak on the street,” she said. “Before, I didn’t notice how you needed to be brave. We just said, ‘Let’s do it, it might be interesting for our PhD.’”
The closer the big day came, the more nervous she became. “But when I stood on the box, I forgot everything. I forgot I was nervous.” Shouting about science on South King St in Dublin – metres away from Grafton St, one of the city’s busiest shopping areas – Zhang didn’t even notice her colleague holding an umbrella up for her as the rain started to fall. She spotted people stopping and listening from afar and beckoned them to come closer.
‘For me, a scientist is someone like Marie Curie – she’s a scientist. It’s hard to say ‘I’ am a scientist’ – FENGYUAN ZHANG
Of course, for this year’s Soapbox Science, no members of the public will be allowed to come close to the speakers. Dr Jessamyn Fairfield , one of the organisers of Soapbox Science Ireland, explained that the events originally scheduled to take place this summer in Dublin, Cork and Galway are now likely to take place online due to Covid-19 social restrictions.
Speakers have been selected and topics being discussed this year range from marine ecology and meteorology, to Viking vision and the first stars in the universe. The organisers now face the challenge of generating that spontaneous contact between scientists and the public that can be so fulfilling for all involved. For example, after Zhang’s soapbox, one man in the crowd came up to shake her hand. “He looked like he learned a lot, so I was happy,” she said.
It’s hoped that this magic...
