Insights: Student sponsorship

Anna Toutounzi explains how she researches anti-counterfeit features by day and dances at night!

Tinmasters is helping to fund a large research project through the Materials and Manufacturing Academy (M2A) scheme at the Swansea University College of Engineering. PhD student Anna Toutounzi is undertaking the research for us and she has had a very interesting journey through subjects and across countries to get to this point.

“I have a first degree in Theoretical Physics and a Masters in Computational Physics from Aristotle University in Greece. In the last year of my postgraduate studies I realised how many areas use the concepts and methods I was familiar with to develop engineering related applications and decided that was exactly what I wanted to be doing. The next step was to find a project that was intriguing enough to motivate my transition into hands-on applied research.

I had heard about the M2A from a friend who is doing her PhD in Swansea, so I looked up the opportunities they had available and the Tinmasters project seemed particularly appealing. It was definitely challenging, quite promising in terms of the impact it could potentially make in the industry and yet extremely open to new ideas. Happily I was an exact match for the desired student profile so I applied, was accepted and within a few short months I had moved to Swansea to start my Engineering Doctorate.

Doing a PhD does not exactly lend itself to pursuing multiple hobbies, but one thing that is important for me to maintain is dancing. Before I turned my attention to physics I had studied for a Professional Dancer’s Teaching Diploma – in fact I had been almost solely focused on dancing for nearly seven years at that point. When I started my Theoretical Physics degree I decided that, for me, a perfectly balanced life needed to include both physics and dancing. I can’t say that I have been completely successful in that respect, but my current apartment is, for all intents and purposes, a dance studio with plenty of space to move around!”