Biography
I am a scientist and educator whose work has crossed engineering, physics, and biology. I was trained in the first cohort of Nanotechnology Engineers at the University of Waterloo in Canada, before studying physics in Prof David Cory's group at the Institute for Quantum Computing, where I built confocal microscopes for studying atomic defects in diamond for use in quantum information processing experiments.
I then moved into quantitative biology at the University of Cambridge. During my PhD, funded by a Microsoft Research scholarship, in Prof James Locke's group at the Sainsbury Laboratory, I studied how noisy gene expression and growth dynamics can generate useful phenotypic variability in bacteria.
As a Research Fellow in Prof Gary Ruvkun's laboratory (2024 Nobel laureate) at Harvard Medical School I investigated interactions between the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and microbes from its natural environment.
Most recently, I was a Lecturer (teaching) in the Division of Biosciences and Research Fellow in Prof Chris Thompson's group at University College London developing a research programme in microbial ecology. Potential applications of this research have led to a collaboration with Prof Serge Mostowy's group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
A common thread
Across these different systems, the common thread has been a deep-seated curiosity about how the world works. I have built the microscopes, synthetic genetic circuits, code, mathematical models, and experiments to make careful measurements and glean the mechanisms underlying the phenomena around us.
Teaching
My teaching has spanned elementary mathematics and higher education quantum mechanics, molecular bioengineering, genetics, and cell biology, alongside research supervision and mentoring. I use diagnostic questioning, authentic problems, and staged independence to help students move from following procedures towards exercising their own scientific judgement.
For private tutoring and my teaching record, see Tutoring & teaching.