Education

• University of Oxford, PhD in Environmental Science (expected 2021)
• University of Oxford, Double First in B.A. Geography (2016)
• Whitgift School, Croydon (2005-2012)

Research experience

I am currently a PhD student at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Professor Simon Dadson and Dr Steven Reece.

I aim to combine their research interests and expertise in hydrology and machine learning. You can learn more about my research interests on my research and (eventually…) on my publications pages.

UK Space Agency International Partnership Programme (Lead: Airbus) [Oxford Team]. Under the direction of Steven Reece (Oxford Lead) This project aims to:

Assist decision making and so measurably improve resilience related to flood and drought at national level in Ethiopia (working with the Ministry of Finance) and local level in Kenya (working with women farmer intermediaries and micro-insurance actors).

I am working with Dr. Jian Peng to test and develop drought indices over East Africa (SPI & SPEI).

UK Climate Risk Assessment Report (UK CRSA) Working with Sayers and Partners

The aim of this project is to:

assess the impact of climate change and population growth on future flood risk (to the 2100s) and the opportunity to manage these risks through adaptation

This work will be used in the development of the next UK National Adaptation Programme, due in 2023. Working with the team at Sayers and Partners I am responsible for calculating the impact of floods on public and private infrastructure. This project fits directly in with my goals of using data to answer important questions, particularly with a focus on natural disasters.

Publications

See publications page.

Presentations

Oral presentations

Jan. 2019 - “Transfer of Status Presentation: Characterising Drought in East Africa”, School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford. pdf

Dec. 2018 - “Drought Monitoring from Space”, Environmental Research DTP Student Conference, Oxford. pdf

Aug. 2017 - “Modelling the outcome of football matches [DRAFT/UPDATE]” Physical Climate Stream, NERC Environmental Research Student group. pdf

Jun. 2018 - “PhD Proposal Presentation” School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford. pdf

Mar. 2018 - “Advanced Scripting Wrap up Presentation”, Advanced Scripting University of Manchester. pdf.

Dec. 2017 - “Monitoring Droughts in East Africa”. Physical Climate Stream, NERC Environmental Research Student group. pdf

Teaching

Academic

Introduction to Python School of Geography and Environment, University of Oxford, UK (2018)

I was assisting Dr Neil Hart in delivering a 6-week course on how to use Python. We developed a series of practical exercises to second year Geography Undergraduates who had never worked with Python before.

It was the first year that this course ran and there are definitely things that we learned from the course. The materials can be found here.

Essay Writing Skills Christ Church College, University of Oxford, UK (May 2018)

I gave a series of tutorials to the first and second year Geography Undergraduates on how to construct a good essay for their weekly work, and also for their examinations.

We spoke about:

• structure
• interesting angles to approach a question
• pulling in information from other parts of the course
• strategies for approaching reading lists

Work experience

Great Britain Modern Pentathlon Team - (2007 - 2016) - UK Sport, Bath (UK).

• I was a member of the Great Britain Modern Pentathlon Team moving from the age-group Talent Programme (2007-2012) to the Podium Potential Programme (2012-2016).
• I spent the year of 2015 as a full-time athlete at the University of Bath training for the Rio Olympics. I ultimately finished as the 5th ranked athlete in Great Britain. I won a Senior International Medal (Bronze) at the Polish Cup.
• I won team and relay medals at Junior, Youth A and Youth B Europeans and World Championships.

Data Operations Internship - (Jun 2016 - Sep 2016) - WaterSHED Asia, Phnom Penh (Cambodia).

• A 3-month internship with the Business Intelligence Unit for a WASH sector NGO in Cambodia. I was awarded a scholarship by the Scott-Stone Family Foundation.
• I was responsible for progressing efforts towards developing a shared data platform for organisations to contribute the information they have collected on sanitation coverage and other key sanitation measurements. 
• I was working closely with other key stakeholders in the WASH sector, including the World Bank, the Government of Cambodia, WaterAid and UNICEF.
• My time culminated in a presentation to the Government meeting of WASH practitioners and stakeholders outlining the collaboration with Open Development Cambodia (ODC) and the potential as a locally-led data portal.

Cartographer and GIS Technician - (Jan 2017 - Jun 2017) - Ordnance Survey, Southampton (UK).

• I was responsible for updating the OS Explorer Maps (1:25,000).
• I worked with a number of Cartographers and Data Scientists in ArcGIS to maintain and improve the maps and the mapping process.
• I founded a Data Science Club, where likeminded colleagues and I met to learn new programming skills.

Data Analyst - (Jan 2016 - Jan 2017) - Your Favourite Story, London (UK).

• I was on the analytics desk for a digital marketing agency, using Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics to track customer usage of the websites and to offer optimisations to improve customer experience.
• I was responsible for delivering monthly reports to Mercedes Benz Australia and Massey-Ferguson. I rewrote the reports to run automatically in Tableau.
• I presented a piece of analysis to Mercedes-Benz UK on multi-channel attribution. This was developed using a mixture of Python and Tableau.

Workshops and Courses

ESA Remote Sensing Workshop, ESA’s ESEC-Galaxia, Belgium (Dec 2018)

The Earth Observation Remote Sensing Workshop is an ESA Academy workshop during which university students will become acquainted with the basics of Remote Sensing, along with an overview of ESA’s EO satellite missions. Students will also learn about the science of radar and optical remote sensing, as well as data fusion. Delivered by retired ESA specialists and experts from academic institutions and industry, emphasis will be given to gaining practical skills and putting them to use through group exercises using actual remote sensing tools.

• We were introduced to ESA’s Sentinel missions and the data that they produce.
• We worked with both SNAP and QGIS as open source tools for analysing and viewing ESA data.
• We were also introduced to the mechanisms and intuition behind Optical, Radar and Thermal remote sensing.
• I was one of 30 post-graduate students from around Europe to be selected for this course.
• link

Stan Con 2018, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland (Dec 2018).

• We had tutorials on how to use Stan, a probabilistic programming language with interfaces into Python and R.

• This is a tool that I am extremely interested in using and would love to find future oppurtunities to learn and collaborate with people using it.

• YouTube channel of all the talks here.

Advanced Scripting, University of Manchester (March 2018). Under instruction from Dr Jonathan Fairman. Link here.

Staff from the University of Manchester, Google Cloud, Risk Management Solutions, and Bolt Forecasting will provide instruction in industrial applications, specifically these topics:

• Cloud computing
• Advanced UNIX shell scripting
• Automation of numerical modeling
• Big-data analysis techniques with guided examples

• I was actually awarded the best presentation prize for the work that I did on the course, and was awarded a £300 Amazon voucher. See presentations above.

Bayesian methods to quantify uncertainty and risk in the Environment, University of Strathclyde (February 2018). Under instruction from Prof Chris Roberston

Using examples from environmental science throughout, Bayesian model fitting methods will be introduced and compared to classical approaches. We will demonstrate how to set up complex structural models where Bayesian methods are necessary. Extensions to spatial and temporal smoothing, for example in disease mapping, will also be covered. The OpenBUGS statistical package will be used in conjunction with R for practical sessions. The focus will be on applications and modelling, particularly in areas cognisant with the students’ research, but will also cover sufficient theory to explain the modelling concepts

Full Stack Web Developer Bootcamp, Le Wagon London (Jul 2017 - Sep 2017).

• 9-week intensive coding bootcamp learning HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript (ES6), JQuery, SQL, git, GitHub, Heroku and Ruby on Rails.
• Designed, implemented and shipped to production a Rails prototype of DataBall, for finding valuable bets online.