Having graduated as a physicist (BSc Physics with Astrophysics, University of Leeds, 1993), he began his research in semiconductor devices for particle physics (MPhil, 1995) before moving onto semiconductor materials (PhD, 1998), both at the University of Liverpool, after which gained experience in microelectronics fabrication at Philips Semiconductors before returning to academic research. Since 2006, he has worked in photonics, publishing numerous papers and supervising several students, with his research focussing largely on developing sensors and biosensors for lab on a chip point of application devices. He joined the Aston Institute for Photonic Technologies at Aston University in September 2018 as a Marie Curie fellow and since December 2020 he is a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority and was final year/Masters module leader for Optoelectonics from 2020-2022. From 2020-2024 he coordinated the 3.9M€ H2020 MONPLAS ITN project, his fourth EC project awarded, which targeted the development of technologies to improve our ability to detect, trace the origin, determine the toxicity, and ultimately eliminate, micro and nanoplastics (MNPs) in water. After supervising two doctoral candidates within the project at Aston he has continued the development of MNP analytical technologies as chair of the COST Action CA23131 ’ICPLASTIC’ and participant in COST Action CA20101 ‘PRIORITY’ and the IAEA Project D15021 (5/24-4/28). He is a member of the IEEE, SPIE, IOP, and CPhys.