I was undergraduate at Cambridge (England) and then moved to Oxford where I spent 10 happy years, first as a DPhil student in Sir Roger Penrose's research group, and then as a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College and Darby Fellow at Lincoln College.
Then came the year of the three jobs: in close succession I was awarded a research associate position by the Australian Research Council, to work with Michael Eastwood, offered a lectureship at Edinburgh, and an EPSRC advanced fellowship.
The result was that we spent about half a year in Adelaide (during which we found time to visit some other parts of Australia, with our young daughter in tow) before moving to Edinburgh in July 1994, where I remained until December 2013.
In the course of my 18.5 years at Edinburgh I slowly rose through the ranks. I was promoted to a personal chair in 2006, and also took the Head of School role in the same year. I found this role by turns satisfying, exhausting, and frustrating. In the end I was very glad to get back to a normal academic life of research and teaching; at the same time, I'm glad I had that experience.
The opportunity to join the London mathematical community arose when UCL advertised a chair in 2012. With my children and partner more-or-less moveable, I decided that I would not be likely to get a second chance. I applied, got the job, and am now part of the geometry group at UCL.
Currently, differential geometry and geometric analysis, which means different things to different people. I am not a `fully nonlinear' person (nor am I a `spectral' person). Most of my problems involve a small or large parameter, and/or elliptic problems over non-compact manifolds. (Of course, if a manifold is non-compact, then there is a large parameter, the distance from a base-point. If there is a large parameter in a problem, then its reciprocal is a small parameter.) The differential equations I study mostly come from gauge theory or complex geometry. As such they are usually nonlinear, but the problems I tackle tend to require a complete (or at least refined) understanding of the linearization of the differential equations involved.
You can find out more about my ongoing projects and publications on my research page. If for some reason you want a full CV you are welcome to get in touch.