Dr Farzana Meru
How did your journey into Physics begin?
I followed what I was interested in and what I was good at. If you do something you are interested in, you will naturally work hard at it and hopefully success will follow!
What is your favourite thing about your research area?
I love trying to figure out how planets form, the environment in which they form and how they evolve. And I enjoy coming up with theories that can potentially describe observations. It’s so exciting. I like venturing into the unknown and trying to answer interesting science questions.
Why do you think it is important to highlight women in science? What does it mean to you?
It’s so important on so many levels: Firstly, younger women and girls need to see successful women as role models. This helps to remove barriers that can otherwise stop young budding female scientists from following their scientific interests. Secondly diverse teams are known to be more successful and so it is important to create awareness that there are diverse people working within science. Thirdly, female scientists are doing amazing work and that needs to be highlighted — often when people look for examples of great scientists and great work, the examples they think of are male. But women are pioneering superb scientific research.
