A UNIVERSITY lecturer who worked on the large hadron collider project is encouraging more women to take up physics.

Dr Dawn Leslie, 29, who teaches at Brunel University, is attending the third International Conference on Women in Physics this week in Seoul, South Korea.

Dr Leslie, of Copperfields, Beaconsfield, was chosen as one of three UK women physicists funded by The Institute of Physics to attend.

She has recently been working on one of two large general purpose detectors at the large hadron collider at the Cern laboratories, Geneva.

The LHC, which began operation last month, is the world's most powerful particle accelerator and aims to discover information about the beginning of the universe and how it works.

She said: “My particular interest is encouraging pupils, especially girls, to continue to study physics at A-Level and beyond.

“This is an especially exciting time in science and engineering - the current work at Cern provides excellent examples of the range of opportunities available to those with a scientific education.

“Attending the conference is a fantastic opportunity to share education practices and ideas with physicists from across the world.”

Only 21 per cent of UK physics undergraduates are women, and only four per cent of physics professors are female, she added.

The three-day conference, organised by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, will be attended by 300 key women physicists from more than 70 countries.

Its aims is to set up a network to encourage young female students to take up a career in physics.

They will also discuss education for the next generation of women physics.