Paul is an interdisciplinary Research Fellow based in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bristol. He has wide-ranging research interests which span sustainability/sustainable development and applications of Information & Communications Technologies (ICT).

Paul’s current projects are:

CANDISE (Change-Oriented Assessments for Net-Zero Digital Services) is an EPSRC funded project that aims to develop a new framework for anticipating the potential systemic, long-term, energy and carbon impacts in digital infrastructure from changes to the design, operation, and use of digital services. 

DIMPACT builds on our previous Sympact and Teapot projects focused on carbon footprinting of digital services. In the DIMPACT project we work in partnership with Carnstone (sustainability constancy) and digital media companies including; TV and streaming organisations, news media, academic publishers and others, to develop and enhance a tool help estimate the energy and carbon footprints of digital media and publishing services.

Other recent projects include:

• TEAPOT (Tools for Environmental Planning of Television) working in partnership with BBC Research and Development to model and understand the energy and carbon footprint of TV viewing across media platforms (Nov 2016- Jul 2019)
• IODiCUS (Interoperable Open Digital Control Unit System) - Innovate UK project taking a user focused approach to the development of data visualisation and smart energy management in an urban Localised Energy System (the University of Bristol estate) (Oct 15 – Oct 16)
• STEEP (Systems Thinking for Efficient Energy Planning) working with the Center for Sustainable Energy on a web-based environment to support community engagement in urban energy planning (Jan 2015 - Oct 2015)
• Delivering Balanced Digital Productivity, an impact accelerator project working with the personal productivity training company, Think Productive, to implement learnings form the previous Digital Epiphanies project in practice (Mar 2014 - Jan 2015)
• Digital Epiphanies, which was focused on understanding the roles of digital technologies in the context of ‘work life balance’, including their roles in the complex systems that bring about beneficial/detrimental work-life balance, and to identify potential 'points of intervention' where digital technologies may be able to make a 'positive' contribution (Mar 2013 - Feb 2014)
• A short study, Virtual Adaptation, funded by the Cabot Institute into the potential applications of ICT in enabling effective adaptation to climate change (Dec 2012-Feb 2013)
• The Sympact project, that worked with the Guardian Newspaper to asses the energy and greenhouse gas footprints of providing digital media services. Paul's work included developing methodological approaches to assess the energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of internet-based products and services. In addition he investigated how an understanding of user behaviour could  improve the quality of energy and carbon footprinting (Nov 2010 - Oct 2012)
• The Greening Events project, which was funded under the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), Greening ICT Programme and was based in the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (IT Services R&D/ILRT). The project took a systems perspective to investigate the potentials of ICT to enable more sustainable event organisation and management (Jan 2010 - Feb 2011)

Prior to re-joining the University of Bristol in 2010, Paul was a Senior Research Scientist at Hewlett Packard Labs, Bristol, where he was a member of both Sustainable IT Ecosystems Lab (SIEL) and Semantic and Adaptive Systems Department. While in SIEL he worked in collaboration with WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) to develop methodologies for assessing carbon emission reduction potentials of ICT solutions. During this period he was also HP’s representative on the WRI/WBCSD Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Product & Supply Chain Protocol Technical Working Group on Data & Quantification.

In addition to his work at University of Bristol, Paul is a UX (User eXperience) Analyst with Epimorphics a Linked and Open Data company based in Portishead just outside Bristol. His work there has included work on the design and publication of open data with the Environment Agency, Land Registry and Food Standards Agency.