Making the World Better

I realise that this is a pretentious title, but there isn't a clearer way to say it. In my career and in my life, I want to proactively work to improve the world in whatever ways I can. In a professional context, I look at the potential impact of a project or role as a critical factor in deciding whether to accept or not. I have also invested considerable time and energy in building a tangible skill-set:

  1. Climate: I have worked for the past 7 years mostly with climate-focused start-up. First with Immaterial, where I worked on developing a process to produce MOF (metal-organic frameworks) with a unique crystalline, monolithic structure which enabled super space efficiency, for example for carbon-capture or hydrogen-storage. Then with Sirona, where I led the Sorbent development team to design and qualify the most effective and energy-efficient technologies to capture CO2 directly from the air.
  2. AI Governance: I am privileged to be a fellow of the amazing and prestigious Talos AI Governance Policy Fellowship in Brussels, an intense 8-week program covering all aspects of AI safety and governance, with a special focus on how to influence policy, including EU policy. To supplement this, I have graduated two 8-week Bluedot training courses, one on AI Safety and one on AI Alignment.
  3. Charity: I've also been lucky enough to be accepted into the even more prestigious and even more intense AIM / Charity Entrepreneurship Incubator, which Rutger Bregman described as "Hogwarts for do-gooders"!) where over 8 weeks I learned by doing, and eventually co-founded a charity, Effective Giving Ireland. As part of this program, I got to work with some great people from Giving What We Can, and was inspired to take a lifetime pledge. If you take away just one thing from this page, please let it be to click on this page and ask yourself why not take one of the best decisions you will ever take.
  4. Artificial Protein: I don't have any tangible qualifications here, and I have not worked in this field. But I believe that this is a critical challenge that we must solve right now - to ensure sufficient food-supply, to limit climate-damage, to reduce animal suffering - and many of the obstacles to making this transition seem to be in the area of chemical engineering and scale-up, which just happens to be where I've spent most of my career.
  5. Policy and Influence: I am not a qualified lobbyist or policy expert. But in some of the areas above, there are massive opportunities to "improve" the EU's policies to better serve the needs and wishes of the EU citizens. And I'd be happy to support anyone working on these questions.
  6. Science & Technology Education: When people understand science and technology, they are far more likely to make wise choices and far more difficult to manipulate with misinformation. I've done a lot of technical coaching & teaching classes during my career, and I'm always excited to help anyone understand the world better.