Career History

I completed my BSC (Hons) in Biological Sciences at the University of Wales, Bangor, and mostly focussed on plant physiology, marine biology and evolutionary biology. At that point, even though I considered starting a PhD in plant physiology (thanks to my great project supervisor, and proud Welshman Prof Deri Tomos), I knew I wanted to become a theoretical biologist, much like my ‘hero’ John Maynard-Smith. To help me to achieve this this goal I then moved to the University of York to study for an MSc in Biological Computation. Here I learnt to code in C++ as well as key skills in mathematical modelling (my favourite) and statistics (not so keen, but a necessary evil). To this day I still struggle to code in R without first thinking of the C/C++ code structure, and I continue to have a healthy skepticism of most statistical analyses. I then managed to stay on at York to start a PhD with Profs Richard Law and Calvin Dytham, and just over three years later I submitted my thesis on spatial ecology and the evolution of dispersal. I was very lucky to have has them both as supervisors and I cannot imagine a better PhD for me. Soon after I was fortunate enough to get a postdoctoral position at Imperial College, London, working within the NERC Centre for Population Biology, then directed by Prof (now Sir) Charles Godfray. That was great fun and enabled me to network with lots of current and future stars in ecology and evolution. After five years of hard graft at Silwood Park I managed to be awarded a 3 year NERC Postdoctoral Fellowship which I took to the University of Sheffield. After 18months there I then won a job as a lecturer in ecology at University College London, and I’ve been here ever since......

Background

I am a proud East Anglian who hails from a tiny village in the heart of Suffolk (near Woodbridge, capital of the world). Ill adapted to the pace of London life I can sometimes be found slowly wandering through the underground transport system, politely letting strangers on trains in front of me.

Other trivia: I have an Erdős number of 3, having published a number of papers with Sofia Olhede who has an Erdős number of 2.