Biography

I began my academic career at the University of Western Australia (UWA) in 1994, enrolled in a combined Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Engineering 5-year programme. In 1997 I completed the Bachelor of Science, taking the extra Honours year, with majors in Information Technology and Applied Mathematics. In my Honours project, which was jointly supervised by Dr Peter Kovesi from Computer Science and Dr Stephen Gardoll from Geology, I applied shape analysis techniques to prospectivity mapping for mineral exploration. This was my introduction to academic research, leading to a publication in the Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, and also to my first position writing commercial software. In 1999 I moved from Perth to Sydney where I transferred my mechanical engineering studies to the University of New South Wales (UNSW).

During my first two years at UNSW I was employed by A/Prof. Chris Bertram via ARC funding, carrying out collapsible tube experiments in his bio-fluids laboratory. This work evolved into my engineering Honours dissertation and was presented internationally at ASME and IUTAM conferences; the major findings were published as a paper in the Journal of Fluids and Structures. In the following years I was employed on a number of research projects at UNSW, from automated cell counting and a digital brain atlas through to fishing vessel hydrodynamics. I completed my studies at UNSW at the beginning of 2004, graduating with a Bachelor of Engineering with 1st class honours and a Master of Biomedical Engineering. Chris Bertram also supervised my masters project, which was a CFD study of the damping mechanism in a rotary blood pump.

After a year out in the mining industry in Western Australia, I returned to academia in 2005 commencing my doctoral studies at the School of Engineering, University of Warwick, U.K. Up until April 2008 I had the privilege of being supervised by the late Prof. Peter Carpenter, who introduced me to his work on the mechanics of syringomyelia. I subsequently developed cerebrospinal models based on one-dimensional analysis of collasible tubes and lumped-parameter hydraulic circuits; I struck up a collaboration with Mr Andrew Brodbelt, a consultant neurosurgeon at the Walton Centre, Liverpool, for medical expertise. Dr Duncan Lockerby acted as supervisor for the end stage of my PhD, which I was award in October 2009.

From March 2009 to March 2012 I was a Research Fellow at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. In this position I worked with Prof. Tony Lucey investigating the fluid-structure interactions (FSI) of the human upper airway in obstructive breathing disorders such as snoring and sleep apnoea. This project was in collaboration with the Optical & Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, UWA and the West Australian Sleep Disorders Research Institute at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Perth. To model the strongly-coupled large-displacement FSI of the upper airway the open source finite element code oomph-lib was used. Computer simulations were developed in collaboration with one of the code's chief authors, Prof. Matthias Heil, who hosted me as a Long-term Honorary Visitor at the School of Mathematics, University of Manchester, U.K.

I took up the research-focused position as Lecturer of Biofluid Mechanics at Curtin University in April 2012. I held this post for one year before voluntarily converting it to a position as Research Associate and then Adjunct Lecturer to pursue external endeavours in Latin America. I continue to be involved in the investigation of syringomyelia and related fluid and solid mechanics in parallel with more recent respiratory modelling.

While mountaineering in Guatemala and Mexico I sustained several injuries that required extensive physiotherapy. This experience inspired me to be able to offer the same assistance I was given, and so in February 2017 I commenced training as physiotherapist at the School of Physiotherapy and Exercise Science at Curtin University, Western Australia. My vision is to draw upon my scientific expertise in biomechanics to provide optimal diagnosis and treatment of human movement disorders as a Physiotherapist, helping people return to activities that give their lives meaning, such as reaching mountain summits at high altitude.