I am a geophysicist at the Department of Earth Sciences, and a Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Oxford. I also am an adjunct scientist at Lamont-Doherty Observatory, Columbia University, New York (brief bio below).

My research is concerned with deciphering Earth’s interior from sedimentary basins to the core by means of seismic waves. Specific topics of interest include wave propagation in complex multi-scale structures, deep-Earth structure and dynamics, seismic tomography, numerical methods for PDEs and high-performance computing, inverse theory and adjoint methods, Bayesian inference, noise interferometry, exploration geophysics, the nature of seismic sources, seismic hazard and risk assessment. I have developed the axisymmetric spectral-element method AxiSEM which is used by various groups around the world, and have worked on a number of other methodologies including instaseis and syngine. Our software codes run on laptops as well as large supercomputers in the UK, Switzerland, USA, and Germany. My research touches upon aspects of geophysics, applied mathematics, continuum mechanics, optics, signal processing, statistics, medical imaging, optimisation theory, civil engineering, high-performance computing, complexity theory, psychology, as well as exploration, re-insurance, and hardware industries. I enjoy many such trans-disciplinary collaborations around the world and engage with the wider public and community. I coordinated the Solid-Earth Dynamics network of the Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing in Switzerland, and I am currently affiliated with Oxford Solid Mechanics, the European ITN network WAVES, the EU Cost action TIDES, and the Deep Volatiles consortium.