Labelling herself as a shy child, Briony never thought herself destined to become an academic. But now she encourages children to find excitement and intrigue in research, no matter what they are interested in.

She started her career as a part-time teaching fellow in Design Theory, but is now based in Mechanical Engineering. She uses her knowledge of patterns and structures to develop different areas of research.

Briony is an Associate Professor in Design Science, she leads a portfolio of design research at the intersection or the arts, science, and society. 

Read more about Briony and her research.

Transcript

[Briony is sitting in front of a white background speaking directly to camera.]

Briony: So what do Textiles, viruses, ballet and engineering have in common? Well, that's the unusual route that my research career has taken.

So I'm very much an accidental academic. I wasn't very academic at school. I was one of those kids that, well my A-levels didn’t really matter because I didn't need those academic skills. I was going to become an artist.

So as a child, I was painfully shy. I was so shy, I couldn't read out loud in class. I took solace in creative activities to explore the world around me. I spent time doing activities like pleating footballs for the neighbour's child, painstakingly making sure - trying to make sure that pattern aligned on the wrapping paper. It took me absolutely hours.

I absolutely loved Macbeth, but could not read out loud. Painfully stumbling over the words. But I eventually found my voice. My English teacher did an impromptu drama session. I was chief prosecutor and I destroyed Macbeth on the stand. Finding my voice through that creative exploration of the text.

So I was a quiet, creative soul, and I was pushed towards art college. I ended up studying textiles after art college. I loved exploring three dimensional structures and wanted to do more making with my hands. But I also liked that balance of academic activities. So I did a course that combined 50% arts and making and 50% science. So exploring the science behind textiles. So what caught my attention was the use of maths and geometry and textiles.

I’d studied microscopic forms at art college, and I'd always been interested in that repetition and the structure that you could see within nature. So I was naturally drawn to this idea. But textile patterns are two dimensional, and I was interested in three dimensional space. What happens when you take those patterns into three dimensions and they wrap around a shape? So it's essentially taking your two dimensional pattern, and folding it up into three dimensions. Very similar to when I was wrapping that football as a 12-year-old for my neighbour.

So how do textiles and wrapping paper shapes relate to viruses? Well, as I was studying, I realised that the geometry and the theory that I was looking at that comes from crystal structures actually is very similar to how virologists look at how proteins arrange around the shells of viruses. They're very symmetrical in their structure.

So actually viruses have a very similar shape to a football. They're spherical in nature and about 50% of them have the same geometry as this 20-sided shape; the icosahedron, that's got 20 triangular faces. And in fact, this shape, geometrically, is related to this one, which is a model of the polio virus.

So my work then took a different path, and I began collaborating with scientists and looking at how we visualise science, visualise scientific research, both within the research process and afterwards to help the public understand and communicate new breakthroughs and findings.

So how do I do it? I use the artistic skills, the visual skills that I've got, and a lot of the making skills that I gained as a designer. So some of the models that we've been creating recently look at the dynamic nature of viruses and how they change shape during the infection process. And we've used these to develop educational resources for schools to have hands on models in the classroom, for children to understand how viruses work; What are their shape, what's the function, and how does our immune system respond to them.

An exciting new development is looking at shape with ballet and how this relates to engineers who look at joints and movement and and how we can use ballet dancers as examples to visualise extremes of movement for teaching children about engineering.

So my career has really been forged by making those connections across disciplines, working with areas that you’d think were quite disparate, very different, but using ideas of shape, form, symmetry and pattern, that underpin so many areas across the arts and science, to connect and bring ideas together and create something new. And I feel that value of bringing the different disciplines together to create something that's bigger than the separate parts is really the value of having a creative within your research project.

So actually still feel like that shy child that often lacks confidence. And actually, I still use that acting trick when I'm teaching because it helps me act the part, even when I don't feel it. And a large part of what I do now is working with schools and young people; Children who were like me, who might not be seen as academically gifted. They might explore the world in different ways. They might express their understanding in different ways. And I enjoy working with schools to look at how they can connect areas of the curriculum, be it art and maths or D.T. and geography and history how they can help children to express themselves and explore ideas in different ways.

As researchers were often asked, “So what's the point? Why did you do that? How does your research change the world?” And for me, I don't think my research has to change the world. If I can change the perspective, the outlook and the confidence of one child, that's enough.