I have an established track record of both the undertaking of research itself and the management and leadership of research at all levels from individuals to Faculty and whole of institution. I have also taught extensively in the physics and materials science disciplines and lead the development of new degrees.

Originally from the UK where I undertook doctoral studies at Southampton University. I first arrived in Australia in 1989 as a senior tutor at the University of Western Australia, then spent 4 years in the US as a research fellow jointly between Johns Hopkins University and University of Maryland, returning to Australia in 1996 to take up an academic appointment at Flinders. With the lure of the big city and the chance to pioneer nanotechnology education in Sydney, I moved to UTS in mid 2002. At Flinders University I co-founded the first nanotechnology undergraduate degree in Australia, and as Associate Director of the Institute my primary responsibility was the development of nanotechnology education initiatives at UTS.

I have research management and leadership experience as Head of School, Physics and Advanced Materials, Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Science and most recently as Assistant Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research: Performance. My main interests have been in the development of methods for evaluating research in meaningful and holistic ways that go beyond standard productivity measures or proxies for research quality. My contribution to the University has been to develop and implement methods to support individual research career development and guide strategic research management at all levels. This includes developing institution wide research infrastructure, processes and systems to support research excellence, for example the use of data analytics capabilities to inform decision making.

My research interests are in the broad field of computational materials science, using computer simulations to understand and predict the properties of materials. These are simulations conducted at the level of atoms and the electrons and nuclei that they are made from. Nuclei determine the structure of a material, while the electrons are, by and large, responsible for their properties. My research is essentially about solving the quantum mechanical equations (essentially variants of the Schrodinger equation) that determine the ‘motion’ of the electrons, these simulations require high performance computing facilities where many processors are running in parallel. I use a number of existing computer codes for these simulations and have worked with the developers of one particular code to implement novel methodologies that allow the quantum mechanical problem to be solved for large numbers of atoms.

At the end of 2020 I took the decision to take a voluntary redundancy from UTS to pursue my interests. I maintain an active research profile and connection to UTS as an Adjunct Professor. In my spare time I ride push bikes and clings to rocks.