Profile

I have been the Director of the ARIES and EnvEast DTPs since 2013, and am Professor in Atmospheric Chemistry at UEA. I have two grown-up children and, just recently, a first grandchild.

I am from a low-income family background, state school educated, and first generation to University on a means-tested full grant due to financial circumstances. I loved science and the great outdoors at school, and always wanted to be in research, but I was terrible at exams and didn’t do well in A-levels! I was fortunate, though, to have been helped along the way by wonderful, inspirational and supportive teachers, supervisors and mentors at School, University and in my career beyond PhD. The latter has taken me all over the world, working for several years in Canada and in the US, and short spells in Australia, Switzerland and Malaysia.

The last several years as DTP Director have been the most enjoyable and rewarding of my career. I have immensely valued working with postgraduate researchers (PGRs) at this early point in their professional careers, with their inspiring enthusiasm, curiosity, tenacity and diversity of talents. I am pleased to have had the chance to give something back.

We in ARIES are committed to embracing diversity, and continually strive to make the DTP an ever-more inclusive and supportive environment for our PGRs. We put PGRs at the centre of everything we do. Our close-knit Executive Team, which includes individuals with specific responsibilities in ED&I, in Wellbeing, and in Quality and Assurance, have developed, and continue to develop, strategies to address these issues. I am proud of what they and we have achieved, while recognising that there is still more to do.