My longstanding interest in analogue and power electronics has proved an ideal background to support a varied portfolio of research projects ranging from More Electric Aircraft technologies to environmental sensing and from structural health monitoring to energy harvesting. The common theme running through my research is the efficient manipulation of electrical energy: an important consideration whether dealing with a 200kW aircraft generator or a 1μW energy harvester. The continued advances in switched-mode power circuit architectures and components are enabling new applications such as the electrical actuation of aircraft flight control surfaces, or adaptive, power autonomous vibration suppression. I particularly enjoy projects spanning discipline boundaries and have formed successful collaborations with academics working in non-linear mathematics, glaciology and structural dynamics.

Energy Harvesting

Energy harvesting is the term applied to low power renewable electrical energy generation. Commonly it can take the form of harvesting solar, heat or vibration energy. I am interested in the design of transducers for vibration energy harvesting, particularly electromagnetic transducers and non linear resonant structures, and also the design of power conditioning electronics for all forms of harvesting. By studying the interactions of systems with dynamic components in both mechanical and electrical domains we can design energy harvesting systems with optimised power generation.