After a physics degree and research at the University of Chicago Becky taught in a variety of schools and was Senior Lecturer in physics at the University of Kent. She is now Director of the Institute for Research in Schools (IRIS) based at Simon Langton School, Canterbury. IRIS supports school students and teachers to work alongside research scientists giving them opportunities to be involved in authentic research.
IRIS has a number of exciting projects running including a new style cosmic ray detector LUCID (Langton Ultimate Cosmic ray Intensity Detector) launched in space on Techdemosat-1 in July 2014. Associated with this there is a network of school based detectors called CERN@school which work with GridPP to give all schools access to this data. Authentic Biology, supported by the Wellcome Trust, supports school based research in the biomedical sciences.
Becky was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2008 and received Honorary Fellowship of the Institute of Physics in 2014. She is Visiting Professor, School of Physics and Astronomy, Queen Mary, University of London.