Profile

I’ve loved maths and physics since I was young. I wanted to know why everything was the way it was. The final answer was always “we don’t know”, but it almost always got there through physics. Wanting to learn more is why I studied physics at Bristol. Since I ran out of fundamental physics I could learn from a course, I decided to give research a try, and ended up in a PhD at Liverpool.

My interest in computers started quite young, and mostly came from playing games on a PC. I can draw a line directly from my current computationally focused research back to figuring out how to mod Minecraft on my mum’s computer.

Growing up, I played a lot of Roll-playing games with my friends. Naturally, I joined a D&D campaign at university, and have been in various groups since, currently playing in two groups once a week each.

My work is all about the strong force, which holds atoms together. Atoms are made of protons and Neutrons, which are made up of quarks. Quarks are just particles, like electrons, but we only find them together in groups, usually two or three. We have a really good model for how they work, but the calculations for actual predictions are really hard, and we can’t do them in the normal way we do for other particles. Instead, we use a type of method called Lattice QCD, which is just a name.

The calculations are still hard, but we can do them. Because they involve so many steps, we get a computer to do them, and not just a normal computer, but really big computers. We can compare the results we get to particle experiments, like the LHC at CERN. By doing this carefully we can try and find new things we didn’t know about before.

Being a theoretical physicist, I don’t work in a lab. Instead, but with computers and whiteboards. Because of that, I can mostly choose the hours I work. I’ve always been a night owl so I usually come and go a bit later in the day, at least when I don’t have a 9AM meeting!

Most of my day is spent working on a computer. Mainly generating and analysing data. I do this by writing and running code. My work is very collaborative, so I have a few weekly meetings with my various collaborators, and my supervisor.

I usually go home around 6. The flexibility of my work can make me make it tempting to work long, but I try and keep a good work life balance, so I leave my work at the office, and almost never work on weekends.