What is your role at Flinders?
I’m an Associate Professor in Nuclear Engineering at the College of Science and Engineering and coordinate Flinders’ postgraduate nuclear courses. My role covers the development and delivery of our nuclear engineering education, particularly in areas such as nuclear safety, reactor physics, criticality safety and regulation, as well as working with industry and government to make sure our courses reflect the capability Australia actually needs.
Before joining Flinders, I spent more than 13 years in the UK Defence Nuclear Enterprise, including as a Royal Navy Marine Engineer Officer in the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Programme, so it has been particularly rewarding to bring that experience into the development of Australia’s emerging nuclear capability.
Can you tell us about Flinders’ new nuclear courses?
Australia is developing a nuclear workforce at a scale it has never required before.
AUKUS is obviously a major driver of that demand, but nuclear capability extends well beyond submarines into areas including medicine, research, mining, advanced manufacturing, regulation and radiation protection.
What excites me about what we’re building at Flinders is that we’re approaching this as a workforce capability challenge rather than simply creating academic qualifications. Our postgraduate programs are designed for people who may already be experienced engineers, scientists, regulators or technical professionals but need the specialist nuclear knowledge to apply that experience safely and effectively in a nuclear environment.
We’re also working with organisations including ANSTO and, more recently, the University of Manchester through its Nuclear Technology Education Consortium. That gives us the opportunity to combine Australian capability with expertise from one of the world’s most mature nuclear sectors, while continuing to build sovereign capability here in Australia.
Outside of work I…
Outside of work I’m usually in the gym, hiking/camping somewhere around South Australia, travelling whenever I get the opportunity or attempting to convince people that my salsa moves are better than they actually are.
Quote I live by…
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.
Favourite holiday…
I’m a sucker for spectacular natural geography, so it’s hard to pick just one. Road-tripping around Iceland, hiking across Madeira and, most recently, exploring Zhangjiajie National Park in China would probably be my top three.