As a kid, I was interested in space, volcanoes and dinosaurs and I used to collect fossils, rocks and bones. As a teenager I worked jobs do save up to buy a telescope, a 10" Newtonian reflector, through which spent hours gazing at craters on the moon, Jupiter's red spot, and Saturn's rings, and reading about astronomy. At school I did a project on human evolution and specialised in physics and mathematics, and computer science. My scientific interests spanned cosmology, planetary science, anthropology and environmental issues.

In 1989 I went to university. The only course in the UK combining astronomy and geology had been discontinued that year, so I went to St Andrews University which offered the astronomy programme with the best observational equipment in the country. I got the class medal for astrophysics in the second year, but by then had decided I wanted to specialise in theoretical physics. I took classes in cosmology, particle physics, relativity and quantum theory, and in the summer gained a studentship to work at the European Centre for Particle Physics (CERN) near Geneva. I graduated in theoretical physics and mathematics  in 1993.

Next I considered a range of opportunities. I was offered PhD's in space science, meteorology and the Chicxulub crater, but decided instead to do an MSc in Geophysics at Durham, fully expecting to enter the oil industry as an exploration geophysicist. However, the price of oil crashed in 1994, and no jobs were being offered. My MSc programme was inverting seismic data to detect gas hydrates - a subject linked strongly to global warming, and I got an offer to continue those studies at Cambridge University. The thought of studying Cambridge was highly appealing, but then I saw a PhD advert to work on volcanic earthquakes which said "...the student will gain field experience in New Zealand and Indonesia..." and I was sold. I went to Leeds University and met Locko over a cup of coffee. The next time we met was on Stromboli volcano about 5am en-route to a conference on the flanks on Mt Etna.

In 1995 I did indeed travel to New Zealand and Indonesia, to help gather broadband seismic data in volcanic regions in those countries, and then in 1996 I was contracted to work at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory for two months. I found that the "hands-on" observatory work suited me well, and it felt really good to be doing something that really mattered. In 1998, after working in the IT industry for a while whilst writing up my PhD thesis, I took a postdoctoral position at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, where I designed a web-based real-time seismic monitoring system for Alaskan Volcanoes, which is still in use today.

In January 2000 I accepted the position of Senior Seismologist at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. Following a period of neglect and Y2K incompatibilities, the seismic monitoring at MVO was in complete disarray, with data acquisition systems needed to be manually rebooting up to 25 times a day and an average 50% data loss, combined with poor data analysis, lack of spare equipment and a network that was poorly maintained. With a new dome rapidly growing, it became a race against time to put in place robust seismic monitoring, as this was the only technique that could provide continuous surveillance of the volcano given there were no longer enough staff to man the observatory around the clock.

With this challenging situation and MVO being understaffed, I essentially had to do two jobs - as a seismologist and as a software engineer. A robust data acquisition was developed, and a vast array of modern volcano-seismic data analysis software written (in Matlab), as well as the glue to automate data flow (in Perl). Earthworm/Glowworm was installed as the data acquisition system of choice, and all systems were replicated so that should a primary computer fail, a backup computer provided a seamless failover capability. New volcanic alarm systems were designed, along with a diagnostic monitoring system that monitor all possible points of failure in the complex data acquisition, automated analysis and archival systems, and page me whenever any a problem was detected. A major exercise was also undertaken to inventory equipment and procure mission critical spares. On top of working 60-70 hours a week in the office, it was also quite normal to have to answer 3 or 4 volcano alarms per night.

Certainly by 2001-2, MVO had one of the leading volcano-seismic monitoring programmes in any observatory worldwide. A huge effort also went in to recovering data from old orphaned media, acquiring online storage and building up online databases of all the seismic data acquired since July 1995, so that these data became accessible for research. I initiated numerous research projects such as: (i) a rockfall location system which was implemented and used at MVO for about 18 months, (ii) an auto-classification of volcano-seismic event types using a neural network, (iii) system for detecting banded tremor and earthquake swarms. I built an integrated remote-monitoring website that was of primary importance for responding to alarms in a timely fashion, and also tried to encourage communication, teamwork and integrated data analysis at MVO, because I believe these are critical in the smooth running and effective functioning of a volcano observatory.

In 2003 safety became critically undermined as a result of internal MVO problems. These problems had been previously acknowledged by BGS International, but overwhelmed by other issues, the MVO Director was unwilling to deal with them, and instead misled senior management while bemoaning them constantly. The upshot was that BGS scientists responsible for the monitoring programmes had to deal with frequent threatening and abusive behaviour from technical staff, truancy, undermining of authority and an almost total lack of technical support. On some occasions technical staff directly compromised monitoring ability by removing vital equipment or deleting software or data. Such was the unwillingness of the MVO Director to tackle such issues, he would instead criticise and threaten his scientific team for reporting them, earning them a reputation for being troublemakers in the eyes of BGS management. I decided this was an untenable situation and asked to be reassigned to other projects in BGS unless this absurd situation was rectified.

I warned BGS that steps needed to be taken to prevent the seismic monitoring collapsing further (including a significant handover period), but again those warnings were dismissed. I returned in 2004 to find the seismic  monitoring was once again in disarray, asked for and received permission to patch up the seismic monitoring systems as best I could in the short time available, and wrote a report. Apart from this I was assigned to work on a wide variety of different geophysical and software development projects, but these lacked any common-thread and I was not able to establish any definite role within the BGS matrix-management system. So in 2006, after being unsuccessful in my request to take a period of unpaid leave to undertake training relevant to my job at BGS, I decided it was time to move on, though it was hard to leave many good colleagues and friends at BGS, as well as my house and extended family.

In September 2006 I moved back to Alaska to accept a new challenge as a Seismologist at the Alaska Earthquake Information Center. In what is one of the world's most seismically active regions, I decided this would be a good place to branch out from the volcano-seismology I had specialised in so far in my career, and learn more about regional and global seismic monitoring. Its been refreshing experience so far.