My parents were always terrified of letting me have a chemistry set when I was younger - they thought I'd blow myself up because, as well as being interested in chemistry, I was really clumsy. When I got to secondary school, I was inspired by a science teacher who really loved her subject and I thought: "That's it!"  after training as a chemist, I joined British airways 16 years ago to work in their engineering operation. I was the environment manager for our global engineering business, which was a great job. When I came back to work after my third child was born, I moved into carbon management, where the first task I had was to completely redesign our carbon-offset programme.  about three vears aao. we started workina more on biotuels and, because or my background, it seemed like the  { natural thing for me to take on that side of things. So now I've got this great job, which is part science, part policy and part economics. It's really varied and I absolutely love it.  The main problem we face is that biofuels are not produced on a commercial scale. at the moment, you can only fly with a 50/50 mixture of biofuel and regular jet fuel. One of the many projects I'm now involved in is working with Rolls-Royce - we're testing biofuel blends that are completely new and have never been put through an aircraft engine before. We're playing with all the chemical constituents and technologie