It was a humble piece of paper that set Alex McKie on the road to becoming a TV presenter. She used it to demonstrate the theory of flight and landed a job as a campaigner with Noise, an organisation funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, that aims to raise awareness of science and engineering among young people.

McKie has a PhD in community water supply in the developing world, but these days splits her time between consultancy, TV presenting, film-making and working with schools through Noise.

But it is Noise she has to thank for her screen work: “All of us Noisemakers are experts in our fields and a lot of production companies go directly to Noise for people to comment. As an expert I get invited by radio stations to talk about water problems; I was asked to comment on the Katrina disaster. So it started off in radio and progressed to television.” Her first break was as the subject of an experiment involving detox diets for the BBC One series The Truth About Food two years ago.

Raising her profile through the media is “incredibly helpful” for her awareness work, she says, and making science exciting and accessible as a career choice is behind everything that she does. “It never made sense to me [why science isn’t a popular school subject] because I’ve been so inspired by the creative aspect to it,” she says. “It’s the most creative thing you can do. Building a bridge, working towards a cure for cancer – these things take incredible skill and imagination.”

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McKie has certainly applied these creative qualities to her own career path. She is an expert consultant for two small charities, one of whose work involves throwing huge parties and sending the proceeds to water development projects, while the other sells photographs of Alist celebrities, with the proceeds again going to water projects. She is also working on a film about the best way to solve global water problems for the University of Surrey and is working on several series for the BBC, Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel.

“It’s hectic at the moment,” she says. But it doesn’t stop her finding time to work on her own projects. “Big production companies take a long time to get into action so if I have some time off I go off and come up with my own,” she says. “Oh, and I do Teachers TV as well.”

While Noise was pivotal in putting her in the line of media work, a moment of clarity a couple of years ago made her understand the direction her career should take. “At the time I was working a lot with the big agencies, such as the World Health Organisation, and was feeling a little bit frustrated by the bureaucracy,” she says. “I wasn’t making as much of an impact as I felt I could have been.”

She considered setting up as an independent consultant, but at the same time she was getting calls from production companies about water and science. “So I thought, why don’t I merge the two and become an expert who raises the profile of the whole industry. It’s quite ambitious. I don’t know if I’ll succeed, but I’ll give it a crack.”

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