I am a post-doctoral research fellow working with Sami Mikhail at the University of St Andrews. I’m an experimental petrologist – meaning I make rocks in the lab. I study melt structure and trace element partitioning using microanlytical and spectroscopic techniques (EPMA, LA-ICPMS, FTIR, Raman, XAS, NMR). I also have a soft spot for numerical modelling and for playing with data using code (Python, MATLAB, R).

My current research projects are under the broad umbrella of understanding how Earth's atmosphere has evolved since our planet was formed, with particular attention to nitrogen. Nitrogen makes up 80% of the air we breathe. Some people estimate that there was very little N in the early atmosphere, and others estimate that there was much more than there is today. To further our knowledge in this area I am involved with:

• Investigating the partitioning of nitrogen between silicate minerals and melts
• Determining the speciation of nitrogen in silicate melts at various conditions
• Developing a robust method for measuring nitrogen using electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) – measuring nitrogen in small minerals with high spatial resolution is critical for the above projects

I am also involved with some other peripheral projects, including:

• Developing standards for secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) measurements of nitrogen
• Writing Python code to speed up the analysis of a large dataset of mineral inclusions in diamonds