About

This page will contain some information about me, about who I am, what I do, what I care about and what I write about.

The key point is: my goal in life is to make the world better, and I am lucky to be uniquely positioned to do this. My background as a chemical engineer, my experience leading complex research projects at the cutting edge of science, and of managing diverse and brilliant team to achieve breakthrough goals gives me the possibility to contribute in multiple areas.

It will make a somewhat hazy distinction between my professional work as a PhD chemical engineer (R&D innovator, technical consultant, innovation consultant, EU expert, coach and leader of junior research teams in both corporate and start-ups, etc.) and my work/passion in the area of making the world better - climate, AI governance, global health & development, alternative protein, charity co-founder, ... some of which I've done, some of which I'm very open to transition to.

I will also mention some of my other hobbies, which include writing. This is again a hazy distinction in that at lot of my writing is about the things I'm passionate about and/or expert in.

I believe in the inherent goodness of most people. The world right now is in a terrible and precarious state because in too many cases, these good people are not the ones taking the decisions.

I know that the critical problems facing the world (climate, poverty, AI, wars, disease, hunger, ...) are all eminently solvable. This is not just "optimism." I have studied these topics deeply from the perspective of a chemical engineer, from the perspective of a scale-up expert.

But to solve them, we need to take wise decisions, and right now we are not doing that. I am not optimistic that we will change in time. This is not melodrama. When 20% of the experts on AI project that AI might kill all of humanity in the next 50 years and we just shrug, that is not wise. When we know that climate change is causing progressively more damage but we refuse to take adequate measures, that is not wise. When we allow individuals - literally, one fucked up person - to have the power to start major wars and kill thousands or millions of people, that is not wise. When we refuse to take the true lessons of Covid seriously and prepare for / prevent future epidemics, that is not wise.

With my writing and my career, I want to do what's possible to put us on the right path to solving these problems. I may sometimes come across as opinionated or (if you disagree with me) biased. But what I do is follow the logic and the science and the reasonable arguments and draw the obvious conclusions. It is scary to see how many of our leaders do not do this, especially when the conclusions are uncomfortable - instead they rely on a flawed interpretation of induction ('well, we've been ok so far, so we'll be ok in the future.').

I believe in the power of empathy. Almost all of the problems of the world can be traced to a lack of empathy - we fail to imagine what it is like to live in poverty, or to be a suffering animal on a factory farm, or for our grandchildren to live in a climate-destroyed world. And so we act like we don't care, and take decisions that seem selfish. There are great writers and directors who do a wonderful job of helping us imagine what other people's lives must be like. I wish I were one of those, but I'm not.

I do write quite a lot, though, and I will share this. Most of my greatest writing has been match-reports for my highly inept football teams, but I'm not sure the world is ready yet to read about Kieran's "no-f*ck" pass or the winger who was so slow he defied the laws of physics. So I will try to categorise my writing so that those of you who feel brave can delve into the depths of footballing mediocrity, while others can just learn about interesting physics or how to solve world poverty.

This page is a perfect demonstration of one of the complaints I frequently receive, that I tend to write too much without getting to the point ...