I gained a MEng in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Leeds and went on to complete a PhD at the same Institution. My thesis was entitled 'Growth and Characterization of Bismuth Ferrite Lead Titanate single crystals' and involved an interdisciplinary approach to produce and examine this new material. After my PhD I joined the Materials Division at The National Physical Laboratory in Teddington. Whilst there I worked on combining imaging conducted with the scanning probe microscope and the electron microscope. I worked on functional materials including ferroelectrics, photoconductive polymers and graphene. After three and a half years I joined FEI Company (now Thermo Fisher) to work on the combination of 3D imaging conducted using X-ray CT and FIB-SEM serial sectioning. This work was targeted at understanding degradation in materials. After 3 years in this position I joined The University of Manchester as a Lecturer.

I am interested in all areas of advanced imaging and particularly in correlative workflows combining multiple tehcniques and scales of imaging. In particular I work directly with different scales of X-ray computed tomography in the lab and at synchrotron facilties and also I work with focused ion beam (FIB) serial sectioning to create complemtary 3D information. My work is aimed at understanding failure and degradation of different materials but with a particular emphasis on the environmentally assisted cracking of light alloys. 

I am Director of the National X-ray CT facility (NXCT) and of the Henry Moseley X-ray Imaging lab at Manchester. 

My reserach interests include: Correlative Imaging, Environmentally Assisted Cracking, Ductile Fracture, 3D Imaging, Mutliscale Imaging, Plasma FIB, femtosecond laser machining, Nanoscale X-ray CT, In-situ experiments