I’m a South African astronomer currently living in Scotland. I mostly grew up in Durban on the east coast of South African. I did a Physics and Maths degree at the University of Natal (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal), and then a PhD in Space Physics. While doing my PhD I also worked for the South African National Antarctic Programme and over-wintered at the South African Antarctic base in 1994.

I had a short postdoctoral research position at the University of Natal, Durban, before moving to a postdoctoral position at the Bartol Research Institute at the University of Delaware. I moved from there to a postdoctoral research position at the University of St Andrews and then took up an Assistant Professorship in the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) at the University of California, Riverside.

In 2006, I moved to the University of Edinburgh, joining the Institute for Astronomy in the School of Physics and Astronomy. I’m now Professor of Computational Astrophysics and, since August 2022, have also been Head of Institute.