Education and Qualifications

Sheffield Hallam University

Postgraduate Certificate Teaching in Higher Education (PGCTHE), (2019-2020)

• Classification: Distinction
• Awarded on: 4th March 2020

Ulster University

PhD “Computational Approaches to Predator-Prey and Food Web Modelling”, (2015-2018)

• Thesis defended: 3rd September 2018
• PhD awarded: 17th October 2018
• Supervisors: Dr Mark McCartney, Dr David H Glass
• Funded by Department for the Economy, formerly Department for Employment and Learning.

University of St Andrews

Master in Mathematics (MMath) (Honours) (Fast Track), (2010-2014)

• Classification: First Class Honours
• Degree awarded: 27th June 2014
• St Andrews GPA (Grade Point Average): 19.1 out of 20.0 possible.
• Senior Honours Project: “Uniformly-Distributed Sequences”, advised by Prof Lars Olsen.

Belfast Royal Academy

A-levels (A* grade): Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Chemistry

Academic and Teaching Awards

University of Stirling

• Received student nominations for university RATE awards, Teacher of the Year, Faculty of Natural Sciences (2023/24 - 2024/25)

Sheffield Hallam University

• Early Career Research and Innovation (ECR&I) Fellow (2021/22)
• Inspirational Teaching Award - one of twenty-two winners across the university (2019-20)

Ulster University

• Best Thesis Award - Computer Science and Informatics, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment (2018/19)
• Best Poster for a second-year PhD student in the Computer Science Research Institute, Faculty of Computing and Engineering (2016/17)

University of St Andrews

• Senior Honours Project was Highly Commended (2013/14)
• Deans' List, an annual award for academic excellence (Every year: 2010/11-2013/14)
• DE Rutherford Prize, for performance in Applied Mathematics at Junior Honours level (2012/13)
• Tullis Medal and Prize, for performance in Pure Mathematics at Second level (2011/12)
• Carstairs Book Prize, for best students in Second Level Mathematics (2011/12)
• Margaret Stewart Prize, for best First Level Students in Mathematics and Statistics (2010/11)

All Ireland Scholarship Scheme

• Third level education scholarship (2010/2011)

Belfast Royal Academy

In some subjects, I received the highest marks in the Northern Irish exam boards.

• CCEA Joint First Highest Marks in 2010 GCE Mathematics
• CCEA First Highest Marks in 2008 GCSE Mathematics
• CCEA Joint Third Highest Marks in 2008 GCSE Additional Mathematics
• CCEA Joint Second Highest Marks in 2008 GCSE Biology

Other Pedagogical Qualifications

Completed the Doctoral Supervisor Development Programme, Sheffield Hallam University, April 2021. This permits supervision of PhD students at Sheffield Hallam University.

Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

• Awarded on: 9th April 2020.
• Fellowship reference number: PR183393

Completed the 2018 “Induction Course for New Lecturers in the Mathematical Sciences”, organised by the Institute of Mathematics and its Application (IMA). This ran 10th-11th September 2018 at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge.

Presentations and Posters

• 23rd August 2023: "Network stability in co-evolved spatially-explicit model ecological communities" (Conference presentation) at the 10th International Conference on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM), Tokyo, Japan (delivered online).
• 3rd May 2023: "Dynamics and stability in meta-population models" (Invited external presentation) at the Centre for Advanced Computational Science research series, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.
• 30th November 2022: "Dynamics of lockdown simulations and Covid-19 in Northern Ireland" (Invited external presentation) at the department research seminar series, Department of Engineering Mathematics, Sheffield Hallam University, UK.
• 21st October 2022: "Stability in ecological meta-community models" (Internal presentation) at the Computing Science and Mathematics seminar series, University of Stirling, UK.
• 27th April 2022: "Invasion and robustness in ecological meta-community models" (Internal presentation) at the Mathematics research seminar series, Sheffield Hallam University, UK.
• 11th April 2022: "Dynamics of lockdown simulations and Covid-19 in Northern Ireland" (Invited external presentation) at the school research seminar series, School of Computing, Ulster University, UK.
• 30th November - 3rd December 2021: "Age-structured compartmental epidemic models for Northern Ireland" (Conference poster) at EPIDEMICS 8 (8th International Conference on Infectious Disease Dynamics), Online.
• 17th July 2019: "Space and migration in an eco-evolutionary food web model" (Conference presentation) at the 7th Mathematical Models in Ecology and Evolution, Lyon, France.
• 20th May 2019: "Space and migration in an eco-evolutionary food web model" (Conference presentation) at the Materials Engineering Research Institute Research Symposium 2019, Sheffield Hallam University, UK.
• 26th June 2017: "Computational food web models" (Talk) at Evolution 2017, Portland, Oregon, USA.
• 8th April 2016: "Analysis of a class of two-dimensional models with predation and mutation" (Conference presentation) at the British Applied Mathematics Colloquium (BAMC) 2016, Oxford, UK.

Programming Experience

Most of my previous research has been conducted using Fortran 90, and I frequently use (and occasionally teach the use of) MATLAB, particularly for visualisation. However I am in the process of fully retraining in Python, which I now use as the primary language for my work.

All of my course materials and journal submissions are prepared using LaTeX.

Funding

I have been the recipient of the following research funding:

• Stirling Crucible project seed funding: ~£4000 internal funding for a pedagogical interdisciplinary collaboration on "Overcoming Mathematics Anxiety through Esports" with Dr Hee Jung Hong (sport) in 2023/24.
• LMS Early Career Researcher Travel Grant: £400 from the London Mathematical Society to attend Mathematical Models in Ecology and Evolution, Lyon, France in July 2019.
• LMS Research In Pairs Grant: £300 from the London Mathematical Society to conduct a research visit to Ulster University in 2020 (delayed due to COVID-19), to collaborate with Dr David H Glass on belief dynamics and social networks models.
• NERC Discipline-Hopping Grant - internal funding opportunity within the University of Stirling: ~£2600 awarded to support research visits to Sheffield Hallam University for the project “Mathematical modelling and simulation of water vole and mink populations for conservation applications.”

I have also been involved with the following unsuccessful funding bids:

• 2024: "Sharing The Land: Shrimp Farming, Biodiversity And People In Kalimantan" for £200,000 from Darwin Initiative Round 31: Darwin Innovation. Led by Dr Noël Juvigny-Khenafou.
• 2023: "Eco-evolutionary meta-community modelling", submitted to EPSRC Small Grants in the Mathematical Sciences requesting £80,000 for a 10-month project.

• "A cloud-based digital service for epidemiological modelling using intelligent systems: Predictive analytics for population health planning in COVID-19". This joint effort with colleagues from Computing and AWRC was submitted to "UKRI’s Agile Research and Innovation Response to COVID-19". (PI: Prof Sally Fowler-Davis; Co-I's: Dr Carlos da Silva, Dr Majory da Costa, Dr Faiza Samreen, Dr Gavin Abernethy, Dr Jacqui Taylor)

Service

From May 2021 - September 2022, I have been the local representative for the London Mathematical Society (LMS) at Sheffield Hallam University.

Departmental administrative duties at the University of Stirling currently include: member of the departmental chief examining team, deputy divisional director of postgraduate research students, divisional library representative, personal tutor for ~20 students, and organising staff attendance at open days.

I have acted as a peer review for the following publications:

• Advances in Difference Equations, Springer (2018)
• International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, Taylor and Francis (multiple articles, 2019/20/21/22)
• Chaos, AIP Publishing (2019)
• Scientific Reports, Nature (2019/20)
• Ecological Modelling, Elsevier (multiple articles, 2020)
• Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation, Elsevier (2020)
• Energy, Ecology and Environment, Springer (2020)
• Mathematical Biosciences, Elsevier (2022)
• Journal of the Royal Society Interface (2023)
• Nonlinear Science (2024)

I have been the internal moderator for the following modules at Sheffield Hallam University:

• 55-600119 Advanced Modelling Case Studies (2018/19-2020/21)
• 55-502747 Mathematical Modelling 2 (2019/20-2020/21)

Teaching Responsibilities

University of Stirling

Module leader:

• MATU9M3: Analysis I (2023/24) - (2025/26)

Lectures, tutorials and assessment:

• MATU9N2: Mathematics II (2022/23)

Tutorial support:

• MATPMD0: Introductory Statistics for Data Science (2022/23)
• MATU9D2: Practical Statistics (2024/25)

Supervision of final-year BSc Mathematics student projects:

• Computational fractal geometry and dimension; discrete dynamical systems; population biology; measure theory

Supervision of MSc (AI/Big data/Mathematical modelling and data science) student projects:

• Modelling marathon runners; simulating disinformation spread on networks using HK models; epidemiological modelling and simulation; data science and web scraping; mathematical modelling projects; self-similarity analysis of ice island lineages.

Sheffield Hallam University

Module leader:

• 55-502632: Maths for Materials and Design (2019/20-2021/22)
• 55-407824: Rail Engineering Mathematics for Apprentices (2020/21-2021/22)

Lectures, tutorials and assessment:

• 55-504526: Further Mathematics, Systems and Signals (2018/19-2019/20)
• 55-301720: Foundation Mathematics 1 (2018/19-2020/21)
• 55-301721: Foundation Mathematics 2 (2018/19-2021/22)
• 55-600273: Applied Engineering Mathematics (2018/19-2021/22)

Tutorial support:

• 55-404487: Engineering Mathematics (2018/19-2020/21)
• 55-400274: Applied Engineering Mathematics (2018/19-2019/20)
• 55-405238: Rail Engineering Mathematics (2018/19-2021/22)

Supervision of final-year BSc Mathematics student projects:

• [1 project] Discrete dynamical systems and chaos (2018/19)
• [2 projects] Discrete dynamical systems; population biology (2019/20)
• [3 projects] Real and abstract analysis; Feigenbaum’s constant; population biology (2020/21)
• [2 projects] Discrete dynamical systems; population modelling (2021/22)

Ulster University

Tutorial support:

• MAT125: Mathematics for Electrical Engineering (2015/16)
• EEE122: Analytical Methods for Engineers (2016/17-2017/18)
• MAT502: Advanced Probability and Statistics (2017/18)
• MAT137: Mathematics for Computing (2016/17-2018/19)

Lecture cover:

• MAT517: Fractals, Chaos and Complex Systems (2015/16)

University of St Andrews

Tutorial support:

• MT1002: Mathematics (2014/15)
• MT2502: Analysis (2014/15)