I am currently a research fellow on an interdisciplinary project focused on complexity. The project is called ERIE (Evolution and Resilience in Industrial Ecosystems) and comprises researchers from several diverse disciplines incorporating the sciences and the social sciences. The project has many different goals, but I have mainly been working on developing novel methodologies for the modelling of interconnected systems. As a case study to trial these methodologies I, as part of the team, have been investigating the industries in the Humber region of the UK. This region is a large active and diverse industrial area, responsible for a substantial proportion of the UK's power generation, gas landing and oil refining capacities. One of the sub-projects that I have been part of has used and developed the methodology of fuzzy cognitive maps in a participatory context to investigate how such an area might transition towards a bio-based energy economy.
Prior to joining ERIE I was a PhD student working under the supervision of Dr Gianne Derks. My work was concerned with the sine-gordon wave equation. This equation can be used to model a huge variety of systems but my main motivation for studying it was its use in modelling the current across a Josephson junction (an electronic component comprising two layers of superconducting material separated by an insulator) which has applications in the next generation of computers. In this context I investigated what effect a defect (scratch) in the insulating middle layer would have on the flow of the current, finding (amongst other results) that the presence of a scratch could stabilise some non-monotonic solutions. This has direct implications for the use of Josephson junctions as it was previously thought that it was impossible for these solutions to be stable.
More details about my research and the resulting publications can be found on the other pages of this website.
