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At 16 Tom Williams couldn’t see the point of school. He just wasn’t interested, and left without completing his A levels.

For the next ten years, Tom worked in pension administration, earning money to go off travelling the world.

“On my third trip, while spending two years in Central and South America, I started climbing volcanoes.

“They caught my imagination. I like extreme sports, the excitement and danger, and interacting with volcanoes is quite similar to an extreme sport. I thought, I want to study them and understand them. I want a job that will allow me to travel the world and see volcanoes.”

So Tom returned to the UK, did an access course, and applied to university.

“Lancaster was my favoured choice because it did the subject I wanted and is one of the best universities in a really nice location. But I didn’t know if I would get in to any university, let alone my first choice and, if I got in, I didn’t know if I would be capable of doing the course.”

Tom did get in to Lancaster, to study Earth and Environmental Science, and four years later has won the Lancaster Environment Centre’s top prize for an undergraduate student graduating on an MSci or MA in 2015.  It was a challenge in the early days.

“I had to do maths and chemistry catch up. I made a friend who was another mature student and we helped each other to work out what on earth the lecturers were talking about: we understood different parts of it so could help each other out.

“But everyone, even 18 year olds, were so friendly and nice it was ok. In the second year I went on a field trip to Carrock Fell in the Lake District and really got to know people.

“I found it all fascinating, particularly in the first year, when we were given the big picture and then progressed and got into the detail. I enjoyed every single part of it.”

He continued to be fascinated by volcanoes, and other forms of natural hazards and, in his third year, he decided to study Strombollian eruptions on Mount Etna for his dissertation project. It demanded a lot of mathematics, a subject he had previously struggled with.

“I knew data I had and knew what I was trying to find out and I had to work out how to do it with maths. I found that I really enjoyed it. It felt like doing real volcanology work, the fact I was doing something that hadn’t been done before. It confirmed I wanted to do a PhD.

Tom just missed out on getting a funded Phd in the very competitive field of volcanology, and so signed up to do a fourth year to turn his bachelors degree into a masters.  It gave him the opportunity to do an extended dissertation. This time he built models of volcanic structures with variable cohesion out of sand and flour, injecting them with syrup to simulate how magma flows through the rock to emerge at the surface.

“We can’t mitigate volcanic eruptions without understanding the processes that cause them, and how they occur. My work was a small piece of the jigsaw, building towards that full picture. I love that. I want to be researching at the cutting edge of what we know and make a difference.”

Tom has now fulfilled his ambition and landed himself a funded PhD, not in volcanology but in plant science. He will be staying on at Lancaster another four years researching how to exploit crop responses to UV radiation: using UV-selective plastics as greenhouse claddings, which help bring crops to yield faster and mean they need less water.

Alongside his academic supervisor, Tom will have a commercial supervisor from Arid Agritech, a major distributors of these smart plastics to Mediterranean and Middle East greenhouses.

While greenhouses are already quite a water-use efficient production system, these new plastics can potentially make them more so.

“We will be taking the research all the way from the lab to field scale in Turkey. This kind of work can have a big impact on thousands of people in developing countries where resources are scarce.”

Learn more about studying for a four year degree or a PhD at Lancaster Environment Centre.