Profile

I was born in California, USA and I moved around a lot when I was a little kid. I lived in England, then I moved to Dublin, then to Waterford and finally back to Dublin. I am still living with my Mum and younger sister and our little puppy, Jessy. Jessy is a Cavachon and is only 5 months old so we are still trying to train her. She loves belly rubs and playing outside (when it’s not raining). I love listening to music, reading, playing and watching rugby and football and surfing, though I spend more time falling than standing, but it’s all in the name of fun. My favourite football club is Chelsea and my favourite rugby club is Leinster. I studied theoretical physics for my undergraduate degree, where I learnt about the stars, oceans and all sorts of cool stuff. I care a lot about our environment and climate change, so I decided I wanted to learn more about the ocean and sea to work on the practicality of wave energy in Ireland. My pronouns are he/him

Jessy trying to jump up on the couch

Myself and Jessy watching some rugby

Me and some friends during white water rafting in Italy.

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I am a scientist that is working towards using the waves in the sea and oceans to make electricity to help power your phones, TVs and computers. I work on trying to copy the sea onto my computer using math. Using this copy I look at how a wave energy device behaves. I work on the behaviour of the device. I do this by looking into my crystal ball of math and seeing what the device is going to do in the future. When I know what the device is going to do we send out a signal to correct the behaviour of the device using some computers. We do this so that we can get as much electricity as possible from each wave. But for this to work we need the computers to be working as fast as possible and sometimes the math is a bit too complicated for the computers to solve the first math equations fast enough, so I need to make some assumptions to try to simplify it for computer to work quickly.

When I find something interesting I get to write about it and then present it at a conference. I was recently in Naples, Italy for a conference where I presented a paper of mine. But, it’s not all work at conferences, you get to talk to interesting people and they usually try to set up activities for everyone. For example, we got to visit Pompeii at this conference.

I wake up at 05:30 and crawl out of bed to brush my teeth and have a quick shower. I quickly make myself a nice warm cup of coffee to get the blood flowing. I chomp down some breakfast (usually some delicious rice krispies or coco pops) and I leave to go to Maynooth. When I arrive out in Maynooth I go to my desk in the electrical enginerering building. There I will play on my computer, trying to solve as many problems as I can until lunch time. Lunch time for me is usually about 12:00, here my friends and I will have lunch sitting on the couches. Usually after eating we like to mess around a little just before getting back to work. Until around 15:30-16:00 when I leave to go the gym. I get home from the gym around 17:30 where I will then try to teach Jessy some new tricks. Then after a while I will usually take her out for a walk where we play in a park until dinner is ready. After dinner I like to relax by watching some TV and get ready for the next day.

My desk with my fan

My working away at my desk