Biography

I am a PhD candidate at the National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, and the British Antarctic Survey. I also have previous professional software development experience.

My current research interests are in polar and climate science using geochemical tracers in marine sediments. I’m particularly interested in what the provenance of marine sediments can tell us about past climate.

I’m also a self-confessed Pythonista: whenever I’ve come across existing spreadsheet-based or manual processes in my research, I’ve replaced them with rigorous and reproducible code, from processing mass spectrometer data to using machine learning algorithms to reproducibly cluster isotopic data. I’m a big fan of the open source ecosystem, and I’ve contributed to the excellent TACtool and pyleoclim projects.

Data visualisation, visual communication, and design are a passion of mine, with a few competitions and prizes to my name. I’m quite nerdy about typography too…

When I’m not working, you’ll find me being a dad, outside, or both: running, cycling (road and gravel), trekking, wild swimming, sailing, SUP, kayaking, or climbing.

Education

PhD, Antarctic palaeoclimate

2020–Present
National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton
British Antarctic Survey

Project: “West Antarctica in warmer and warming worlds: insights from ice-rafted debris” with Steve Bohaty, Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand, Paul Wilson, and Gavin Foster.

MSc, Oceanography

2020
National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton

QPID: A new palaeoclimate database, and an exploration of ocean remineralisation depth” with Gavin Foster

BSc (Hons), Geology

2014
Van Mildert College, University of Durham

Dissertation: “The geology of Berwick-upon-Tweed and Scremerston, Northumberland” with Jonathan Imber

Previous experience

Ordnance Survey

2023
Data scientist (placement)
Automated Feature Extraction R&D team

Developed a new deep learning model using semantic image segmentation to turn aerial imagery into maps, using Python packages keras, sci-kit learn, and geopandas.

Avast Software

2016–2019
Web developer, responsible for ccleaner.com.

Hivedome

2015–2016
Developer, created and maintained internal tools.

Awards and Prizes

  • IGNITE Doctoral Landscape Award logo competition winner (2024)
  • Poster award, University of Cambridge Institute of Computing for Climate Science “Bayesian Machine Learning as a tool for Climate Scientists” Workshop (2024)
  • Poster award runner-up, British Antarctic Survey Student Symposium (2021)
  • Dean’s List award (sustained level of academic excellence, MSc Oceanography) (2020)
  • Palynology Student Award (best coursework in “Microfossils, Environments and Time” module, MSc Oceanography) (2020)
  • BP award for best undergraduate poster, Durham University Earth Sciences Conference (2014)

For more details, see my LinkedIn or ORCiD profiles.