Find an Expert

I study nearby stars and their planetary systems. We know of thousands of exoplanets in the Milky Way, largely discovered with data from the NASA Kepler mission. I use that facility, the NASA TESS mission, and ground-based spectrographs in Australia, the USA, and Chile to find and characterise newly-discovered planets. I also work to understand the stellar activity of the planet host stars and how that might affect habitability. I'm also interested in developing machine learning approaches to maximise our ability to find small signals in these noisy, incomplete data sets. 

My research focuses on the intersection between geology and water, from caves to aquifers. Using stalagmites I reconstruct past climates, past groundwater recharge, and past fire history. I characterise organic matter in natural and human environments, from groundwater to drinking water. Common themes include an interdisciplinary scientific approach between the subject areas of Environmental Earth Science and Engineering, and the use of isotopic and geochemical techniques