Profile

I live in Manchester with my fiance where we both just finished our PhDs and now work. I love to spend time in the outdoors running, walking and climbing, and this is one of the reasons I chose to study volcanoes as it would give me a chance to travel and climb them. I also enjoy playing board games and video games with my friends during my time off. My favorite food is pizza, you can’t beat a proper margherita! My pronouns are he/him.

My research involves measuring how much gases volcanoes emit, which is used to help monitor them. Volcanoes emit various different gases, including water vapour, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide. The easiest to measure is sulphur dioxide. This is the main aim of my research, during my PhD this was mostly from the ground so involved lots of travel! I was lucky enough to even fly around an active volcano on the island of Montserrat in the Carribean in a helicopter to measure the gases emitted, which was a lot of fun! More recently I have started using satellites to measure volcanic gases as well, which has been very cool and has allowed me to keep working through the pandemic.

When I am in the field we wake up early as we want to make the most of the daylight. We have a good breakfast then set off for the volcano, either by hiking, driving or sometimes flying in a helicopter! When we arrive we set up our instruments and take lots of measurements of the volcanic gases, making notes of any volcanic activity. Then, once we are done we return to where we are staying and look at our data, eat some food and plan the next day. We sometimes try to fit in some sightseeing around the work too! When not on fieldwork I spend my time analyzing the data we took while on fieldwork. This involves a lot of computer work, including writing a lot of code which is something I have really grown to enjoy since starting my PhD.