I’m standing for re-election as an ordinary member of the council for an additional year to smooth the transition to a new council chair and to help begin staggering the re-election of council members (moving away from whole sale replacement of everyone every three years). My time on the council these last three years has been very rewarding personally, and I have a strong belief that the council is a key binding influence in our research community that I want to continue to support.
What I’d bring to this role is a background in fundamental solar theory that is deeply rooted in solar observations and my experience on the council from the past 3 years, where in particular I edited the UKSP nugget series. In my work I use MHD simulations to explore the fundamentals of phenomena such as coronal mass ejections, flares, jets and the dynamic structures within the solar wind. This work closely links with observations from the latest missions with strong UK involvement such as Solar Orbiter and DKIST. It is my belief that a key strength of the UK solar physics community is our expertise in the underlying science behind observations and this is something we should continue to promote internationally. As a council member I’ll continue to champion investment in HPC resources (during the last three years I was involved in the Space Weather science case put forward for Dirac-4) alongside ongoing support for our current and future mission involvement.
Having also held an RAS fellowship I’m well aware how beneficial such fellowships are for early career researchers and looking to improve engagement with fellowships from current PhD students and PDRAs is something I’m also keen to promote.
Employment: Durham University: Associate Professor (2023 – present), Assistant Professor (2019-2023), RAS research fellow (2016-2019), GSFC: NASA postdoc program (2014-2016), Dundee University: PDRA (2013-2014), University of Sheffield: PhD in Applied Mathematics (2009-2013).