UCLan reports on  Christine’s success:

Scholar masters her own success

Christine Stokes proves dyslexia is no barrier as she gains First Class in Physics

Years of hard work and commitment have paid off for a First Class student.

Christine Stokes has battled with dyslexia and is now celebrating after graduating from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) with a physics degree.

The 26-year-old attended three local colleges where she improved her GCSEs and started an AS in maths and biology. She knew she was intelligent enough to follow her dream of going to University and studied hard to gain the grades needed.

She said: “I did a foundation in science course at Preston College and went on to do a physics degree at UCLan.” Once her dyslexia was diagnosed, Christine received help with her assignments and added: “Before I had found ways of coping. I didn’t know what the problem was.”

Christine was a very successful student during her time at the Preston based University. She undertook two summer internships from UCLan’s Centre for Research Informed Teaching, received a commendation on her poster for one of the internships and undertook a Nuffield Foundation summer science internship.

She also visited the USA twice, thanks to travel grants from UCLan, to present her internship results at undergraduate research national conferences and received the UCLan international bursary for a one month research project visit to the top Dutch University in Leiden.

“I am also chairman of the UCLan undergraduates’ research society, which I set up with a couple of other students,” she added.

The Walton-le-Dale resident co-authored a paper in Soft Matter, the highest impact factor journal in the field. It was published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Andrei Zvelindovsky, Professor in Computational & Theoretical Physics, said: “It was an exceptional success for Christine as it is very rare for any undergraduates, even one from Oxford or Cambridge, to get a paper printed in a top journal while still in a study.”

The paper explained experimental results done at the famous US Princeton University, by the world leading expert group in the field of so-called Rheology (flow of complex liquids like plastics, blood, creams). This work was supervised by Dr Marco Pinna from Professor Andrei Zvelindovsky’s team.

Christine has now got three offers to continue her study combining a masters and PhD at Bristol University, University College Dublin and University of Manchester.