Fellow Detail

My main research area is marine and offshore renewable energy, especially tidal and offshore wind. I am interested in hydrodynamic modelling, and how this can be used to support human activities, understand their effects, and improve planning and policymaking. I'll also happily talk, from a less expert standpoint, on anything about energy, marine operations, or the sea!

Doing numerical modelling has given me an interest in reproducibility and reliability of computational research, and hence an alignment with SSI goals.

Following a decade-long career outside outside academia I started in research at Heriot-Watt's Orkney campus, in the far north of Scotland. Orkney is an international hub for marine renewable energy development, which allowed me to get an overview of the industry from engineering to environment, from policy to marine operations.

While there I completed a PhD on tidal energy, using numerical modelling. I attended a Software Carpentry course in my first year, and developed my interest in how Doing Things Right can be helpful for everybody concerned in computational research.

Since then I have followed a typically madcap postdoc trajectory, spending short times at the University of Edinburgh, Marine Scotland Science, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the USA. During that time I qualified as an instructor for the Carpentries.

Last year I landed for the longer term at Hull's Energy and Environment Institute, just in time for the pandemic. I teach Renewable Energy, and I plan to maintain my work on tidal energy while also branching out into offshore wind and carbon footprinting.