Question: Do you think your job is important?

Jess Wade answered on 15 Jun 2015:

Yes. There are lots of different parts of my job that are important for different reasons:
I’m the only person in the world using the machines I have to look at an important property of the molecules. This could mean in the future there will be much better solar panels, which capture light more efficiently and get the electricity we need out of the panel faster.
I arrange lots of events to get women excited about science. This is super important because science is a tricky subject, so there are loads of questions we need to answer. If we don’t have as many people as possible answering the questions then we have no chance! So we need ALL the boys and ALL the girls we can get.
I go to tell lots of kids in schools how awesome my university is and how great a science degree is. With a degree in science you can basically do any job in the world: lots of famous politicians have science degrees, as do american presidents, doctors, lawyers, bankers- you name it! It is very important we keep studying science to find out more about the world and look after it. So when I can go to schools and tell them that- or how much money they will make with a science degree- then I can try to convince them to study science at university too.