I am currently an Early Research Career Fellow at CSIRO, working in the Environment and Data61 Business Units. I have experience in fluid dynamics, numerical simulation, high performance computing and machine learning and have previously worked on a wide range of problems in aerospace engineering and computational physics. Below is a more detailed summary of my education and career to date.
I received a Bachelor of Science in 2013 from the University of Tasmania, majoring in applied mathematics,
followed by a Master of Professional Engineering (Aerospace) in 2016 and a Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering) in
2020, both from the University of Sydney. For my MPE I completed a dissertation under the supervision of Dr Ben
Thornber and Dr Gareth Vio on simulating the aeroelastic effects of helicopter rotors undergoing engagement and
disengagement while operating from a ship, so as to inform the design of
Ship-Helicopter Operating Limits at different wind-over-deck speeds and directions.
My PhD thesis, also under the supervision of Dr Ben Thornber, focused on computational modelling of
shock-induced turbulent mixing, a compressible flow phenomenon of particular importance in applications such as
inertial confinement fusion, supersonic combustion and various astrophysical flows. The extreme nature of these
types of flows makes gathering detailed and accurate experimental data either difficult or impossible, therefore
there is a heavy reliance on the use of numerical simulation to gain insight into their behaviour. My thesis
involved modelling canonical flows using Direct Numerical Simulation and Implicit Large Eddy Simulation to help
better understand the physics of transition to turbulence in
shock-driven mixing layers, as well as the persistent effects of initial conditions on the evolution of the
mixing layer.
During my PhD I worked as teaching assistant for two units of study in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and
Mechatronic Engineering, as well as a casual lecturer during my final semester for the unit of study AERO4260 Aerodynamics 2.
I also worked for 9 months part-time as a research associate and one of the CIs on a project with
Defence Science and Technology Group looking at aerodynamic aspects of combined ship-helicopter operations. This
work was initiated by the desire to apply the results of my Masters thesis, also conducted
in collaboration with DSTG, to a real ship and helicopter geometry. The main deliverables from that project were
eventually developed into a modelling tool that is still used by DSTG to calculate ship-helicopter
operating limits for engagement and disengagement operations on Royal Australian Navy ships.
My first job following my PhD was as a postdoctoral research associate in the Australian Centre for Field
Robotics at the University of Sydney from 2020 to 2021, where I worked on a project funded by Thales Australia
on improving how air-to-air
refuelling is modelled in zero flight time training simulators. My research involved generating computational
fluid dynamics models of aircraft wakes and developing a methodology for tuning these models based on pilot
subjective feedback and machine learning.
Following this, I was employed as an Associate Lecturer in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic
Engineering at the University of Sydney from 2021 to 2023. In this role I was responsible for the delivery of
two units of study; AERO3260 Aerodynamics 1 and AERO3560 Flight Mechanics 1. During this time I was also
a CI on a follow-up research project with Thales Australia that successfully delivered a subjectively tuned
aircraft wake model which was approved for use in pilot training by the RAAF subject matter expert.
I also worked on a short project funded by Open Philanthropy that reviewed the literature on some of the
technical aspects of source-term calculations for climate simulations of the aftermath of a nuclear weapons
exchange, which has the potential to cause long-term disruptions to the Earth's climate cycle known as nuclear
winter (Turco et al., 1983).
Specifically, I and Sergio Zarate at the University of Queensland investigated the assumptions that have
gone into previous attempts at modelling the mass fires that are likely to be produced when one or more nuclear
weapons are detonated in an urban environment, along with the amount of smoke that is released from such a fire,
which is proposed as the primary mechanism by which a nuclear exchange can have long term climate impacts. This
work is ongoing. Finally, during my time as an Associate Lecturer I was also a member of the local organising
committee for the 23rd Australasian Fluid Mechanics Conference, which was held at the University of Sydney in
December 2022.
I started my current role as a CSIRO Early Research Career Fellow in June 2023, where I am working on the
Artificial Intelligence for Missions project "Causal inference in high-dimensional multi-scale systems".
My research for this project focuses on applying machine learning methods to the prediction of various modes of
climate variability, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, in order to make forecasts that can be used for
causal inference of the socio-economic impacts of climate change. I am also currently a CI on a project funded
by Defence Materials Technology Centre that is aiming to develop a suite of models for
faster-than-realtime prediction of urban wind fields and plume dispersion.