Westonbirt school's STEM day

THREE high-flying women - an aerobatic pilot, a physicist, and a mountain bike racer - are coming in to land at Westonbirt School to inspire young students to take on scientific careers.

Physicist Dr Susanne Klein, aerobatic flyer Lauren Richardson, and 4X (CORR) World Champion cyclist Katy Curd, will join a panel of scientists to talk about their careers to 150 pupils from local schools at the STEM day.

Stroud-based Dr Klein said it was important to encourage more young people to choose exciting careers in STEM subjects.

“There are more jobs than there are people to do them. There are still only a minute number of women in senior roles in science but if we don’t use the female talent pool there won't be enough people to do all the jobs, in Europe not just the UK.

“We need to encourage boys and girls in to these professions; chemistry, physics, engineering, maths.”

Pupils from Westonbirt and other local schools will start their day on Wednesday February 10 seeing Lauren performing stunts in her bi-plane before she lands in the school grounds.

Lauren, who is one of the top acrobatic display pilots in the UK and does her own engineering maintenance on her plane, and Katy, who counts nine British titles and 17 World Cup podiums among her host of cycling wins, will help Susanne demonstrate the physics of gravity.

They’ll discuss the forces needed to help a person stand upright, why Katy can jump hills on a bike and how Lauren can take off and land her plane.

As a child Susanne, who is doing blue sky research in optical cryptography at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, loved making things fly and explode with her male cousins and brother. She grew up to be the only pupil from her all-girl Catholic school in rural Germany who had ever gone to university to study physics before specialising in optics.

Her current research and development project sees her working in a dark lab, studying how light sources behave to find which ones could be suitable for carrying encrypted data without slowing down computers.

She couldn’t be happier and would love to see pupils inspired by the STEM day to join the field.

“I wouldn’t say doing science was discouraged when I was at school but it wasn’t especially encouraged either. Science is such fun and I would like to see more students inspired to do it.”