Current job title: Associate Professor in Earth System Science. I am an Assistant Director of the Global Systems Institute where I lead on education, and Programme Director of the MSc Global Sustainability Solutions at the University of Exeter. From 2018-2021 I was a Visiting Fellow in the School of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Southampton where previous to my appointment at Exeter I was an Associate Professor of Sustainability Science. Prior to that I was a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany where my work centered around the astrobiology project Planetary Evolution and Life. I carried out my doctoral research in the Centre for Computational Neuroscience & Robotics at the University of Sussex, UK. In 2017 I was a Visiting Researcher at the Earth-Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
I started off my academic journey studying philosophy as an undergraduate as I thought that would answer some of life’s deep questions. Three later I just had more questions. After graduation I spent some time in industry and then some years travelling and working in Asia first as a scuba diving guide and then an ethical or “white hat” hacker. I returned to the UK to take up a place in a masters programme and then carried on with a doctorate.
My academic output may look a bit scatter gun – I’ve published in journals dedicated to artificial life, biogeography, complex systems, computational biology, earth sciences, ecology & evolution, and sustainability – but it’s always some sort of riff on the sort of dynamical systems that pique my interest. The very simplest systems can delight us with their complex behaviour. The tools I use are simulation, very simple maths, a lot of coffee and most important of all, talking with some very wise people, some of whom I am extremely fortunate to call friends. A list of my academic peer reviewed publications can be found here.