Profile

I am originally from South Africa (Cape Town) and before I came to the UK, I lived in Pittsburgh in the USA. I now live in Guildford with my partner, Sarah. Sarah is French and we often go to visit her family in Nantes. For my research, I try to find ways to come up with the best decisions for large problems using computers and mathematics. We solve problems in drug discovery, supply chains, long-term strategic planning for climate change, and how best to schedule things like sports events, class timetables, and more! I also love to teach chemical engineering subjects to my students. When I am not coding, teaching, or writing papers, I love to play guitar in my progressive metal band and to play football and video games in my spare time! Big Liverpool FC and Springbok rugby fan!

In my research, we describe very complicated decision-making tasks, like the design of a rocket engine, a large supply chain problem with hundreds of products and routes, or where to put money in the stock exchange, using mathematics. We can then use calculus and computers to search for the best solutions, and we can prove that the solution that we have found is, without any doubt, the best (optimal) solution. This allows us to solve problems in many different domains and often takes any bias from the designer or engineer out of the decision process. We can also solve these problems in real-time to ensure that our processes are running at the optimum all the time, saving money, energy, and increasing efficiency.

I wake up around 630 and make coffee, stretch, and meditate. I walk to work with my partner (she works just near my University 🙂 ) and arrive before 9am. My typical day involves some teaching, coding, and writing. I also have many meetings with my research students, industrial and academic collaborators, and undergraduate students. In these meetings we discuss strategies and algorithms to solve problems, write equations and find ways to describe a physical system using mathematics, and then try to solve these using computers. I love these discussions where we brainstorm ideas and try to solve many interesting problems! I leave the office around 6, and either go to football training, or head home to play some video games (Rocket League, New World, Apex, are my current games) 🙂 .