Profile

I am originally from Mansfield, near Nottingham, but moved to Leeds to study at the University. I took a year-long placement during my degree working for Caterpillar Inc. in Peterborough. I have also worked on a designing a way to deploy very small satellites in space.

I then finished my degree and worked at Aston Martin in the innovations team in Gaydon, Warwickshire. This meant looking at new technologies, materials, manufacturing methods and assembly methods to make the cars faster, cheaper, and lighter.

After 2 and a half years, I moved back to Leeds to do a PhD because as an engineer, I have the skills to be able to help people and solve problems. I wanted to use these skills to help solve the climate crisis, so I am looking at reducing emissions from heating.

I moved in with my girlfriend and we have a pet tortoise called Michelle.

I’m a big Leeds United fan and go to as many games as I can. I also love taking n sports challenges and have so far managed to complete:

X4 Tough Mudders

X1 Europe’s Toughest Mudder

X2 Half Marathons

X2 Marathons

X1 Olympic Distance Triathlon

X1 Ironman Distance Triathlon

X2 National 3 Peaks Challenge

I am doing a research project at the university of Leeds, looking at how to reduce emissions from heating systems in the UK. In particular I am looking at heat pumps. Heat pumps take heat from the air or ground and convert it to a high temperature to heat your homes and hot water. They can also be used in reverse to cool your house down. Heat pumps only need electricity to work, instead of burning fossil fuels like boilers do. This means that as more electricity is made by renewable sources like wind or solar power, the emissions from heat pumps will decrease. I am writing code to analyse data from heat pump systems that have been operating for many years to try and improve their performance and reduce their emissions. I will also build a simulation of the heat pumps to perform virtual experiments with.

Normally I choose to go to work for 8am and leave at 4pm, meaning I can spend my lunch time with my friends at university, and still have lots of free time in the afternoon. I spend most of my day either writing code to analyse the data I have from the heat pump systems or looking at the results and graphs, trying to understand what they tell me about how the system is performing. I am looking at creating a simulation of the heat pumps to experiment with.

I often have meetings related to my work, but I can also go to presentations and lectures on other topics if they interest me