Short biography
I started my career in the contaminated land field and in particular on bioremediation of contaminated soils. My interests and experience have grown to include water & wastewater treatment, resource efficiency/waste management, Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SUDS) and most recently renewable energy e.g. biomass boilers and waste to energy solutions such as pyrolysis and gasification.
I began working in the environmental sector after graduating with Environmental Biology from Edinburgh Napier University in 1998. Later that year I was employed as the Research Co-ordinator of the Contaminated Land Assessment & Remediation Centre (CLARRC) at The University of Edinburgh. In 2001 I became the Director of CLARRC and in the same year I was appointed as Programme Co-ordinator of the £11.4M LINK Bioremediation Programme. A diverse portfolio of 12 collaborative research projects was supported until the programme ended in September 2009.
I have also served as a Director of the Scottish Environmental Industry Association (SEIA) from 2003-2004 although the organisation was wound up in 2005.
Between 2002 and 2005 I was the Chairman of CL:EAR Ltd (an ENTRUST Environmental Body) receiving landfill tax to support environmental projects.
In 2006 I was appointed as the Monitoring Officer for 3 collaborative contaminated land projects funded by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) having served as a reviewer on the panel which made the awards.
Since 2007 I have spent the majority of my time leading the Scottish Environmental Technology Network (SETN) which grew out of CLARRC and the SEIA. SETN now supports around 150 companies in the Scottish environmental and clean technology sector from our base in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Strathclyde.
In 2010 I became Technical Director of APSU Environmental Ltd. worked with the company developing the Advanced Treatment Station (ATS) water filtration technology.