Profile

I am 53, I live in Bath, am married and have three children who have now all left home. My two boys went into engineering;  one is doing a Masters in renewable energy in France, one a PhD in machine learning. My daughter is just finishing the first year of her degree in Biochemistry. I play table tennis, like indy music, enjoy following cricket, travel, reading, creative writing and generally exploring the countryside.

I have never really known a career outside of the University environment. What I have learned over the years is that you don’t have to be cleverest or the deepest thinker to succeed as a an academic.  What it takes is inquisitiveness, inspiration and humility. It also helps if you like people. It is really a very varied job.

What a lot of people don’t realise is that University professors don’t just teach. In fact, formal teaching in lectures is just a small part of my job. I do enjoy that, especially the large lectures that are like a performance.  I also do research. This is often in interdisciplinary teams with people from other Universities, from all over the wold, and people from industry. I also teach others how to do research. In fact, like most subjects it is not possible to really teach this, it as about showing, observing, reassuring, and doing. It is about giving people the mental permission to use their imagination and to engage.

A lot of what I do is writing. I write publicity materials and pieces for the Mathematics Today professional magazine. I write research papers which appear in academic journals, I write teaching materials, books, webpages, exams, student appraisals, proposals for funding, referee reports on other peoples papers, proposals etc. All of these often go through many drafts. I am quite a dab hand at bashing words and equations into my laptop in all kinds of strange places like on busses and in airport departure lounges.

I also have a lot of meetings with students. I typically supervise about 4 or 5 PhD students, 2 or 3 MScs students and a range of different undergraduates doing research projects with me. I have tutor groups that I meet regularly, in every year of our programme. I enjoy meeting these people, encouraging them and giving support. Then there are meetings (often online, even before lockdown) with international collaborators. In total I probably have 4 or 5 such meetings in a typical working day. Some days I teach lectures or computer labs. Sometimes I attend or give research seminars, where other people get to talk about their findings. I meet with industry quite regularly too, to talk or brainstorm about problems in research or knowledge exchange. There are also administrative meetings, get-togethers to discuss ideas with colleagues.

All of this means that thinking time – time to actually do maths – is usually confined to odd moments in the day. I also write and run various bits of computer code, although increasingly I supervise other people who do that. But I am not averse to doing all kinds of maths on the computer.

The best part of being an academic for me is people, and travel. Conferences and research visits can take place all over the world. I tend to think I actually have best ideas when I am in transit.