Currently I am pursuing two main avenues of interest. The first addresses questions on the fundamental spatio-social biology and ecology of the European badger (Meles meles), specifically exploring the inter-social group movements and activity patterns which reveal the trade-offs between territoriality and non-territoriality, and inbreeding versus out-breeding. This research is being conducted through my second major area of interest, which is using an interdisciplinary approach to solve fundamental biological questions through the integration of biology and tracking technology. As such, I am the zoological component in the WILDSENSING project.

Autobiography

2007-2010: Post-doc., ‘The Wildsensing Project’, WildCRU, Oxford.
Wildsensing is an interdisciplinary team of zoologists and computer scientists from Oxford and Cambridge Universities. We use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tagged badgers (whose presence/absence at focal resources are automatically detected and logged by field based ‘Nodes’) to investigate contact networks within the animal population, whilst devising novel data dissemination algorithms to communicate information wirelessly between nodes and to researchers.

2000-2006: DPhil student, WildCRU, Oxford.
A comparison of the precision and accuracy of dung-counting and distance sampling (using a thermal imager) for estimating deer population density, against a reference cohort-analysis generated population count. My study population was reduced 13 fold over the course of my work, providing the contrasts required to investigate possible density dependent effects on skeletal size and body condition.

1999-2008: Founder member (one of five) of OxLoc Ltd.
An Oxford University spin-out company initially formed to exploit GPS and GSM technologies to track wild animals, but later specialising in tracking unpowered assets using GPS, GSM, GPRS and RFID technologies.

1999-2000: Research Assistant, WildCRU, Oxford.
Field manager of an extensive field experiment investigating the potential effect of social perturbation on Bovine Tuberculosis disease dynamics in a wild population of European badgers.

1998: Research Assistant, WildCRU & Edward Grey Institute, Oxford.
Facilitator in Joint Infrastructure Fund (JIF) application seeking to finance the Wytham Telemetry Network (WyTNet) and rationalising the inputs of zoologists, botanists, technologists, and industry specialists.

1996-1998: Research Assistant, WildCRU, Oxford.
Development of chemical repellents for use on European badgers and Red foxes. Experiment and video equipment design, fieldwork and video data analysis.

1995-1996: Volunteer then general field assistant, WildCRU, Oxford.
Radiotracking and surveying for European badgers. Development of video surveillance systems for remote wildlife monitoring.