1. During your time in the industry, you've done a variety of research projects worldwide - ranging from Lake Michigan to Svalbard. Tell us a bit more about some of your projects and how these opportunities came to be!

One of the things I learned early on was to not say no to opportunities - and to actively seek them out. As a university student, we did a month of fieldwork in southern France and I was fortunate enough to be picked for 6 weeks of fieldwork in the Mississippi delta for my MSc project (my first time on a plane!). I then scraped together my money to travel to Cape Town to present on that work at an IAS sedimentology conference. The seed was planted and since then, I have been fortunate to do research in some amazing places, including Alaska, Hawaii, New Zealand, Oman, Panama, and Svalbard.

In my more recent life as a consultant, I spent a few months at a mine site in Laos located on the Ho Chi Minh trail where, you guessed it, the contaminant of concern was unexploded remnants of war. In my time on site, I never found any bombs (never missed one either!) but I will not forget the day when the superintendent sent me an email thanking me for flagging (during QC) a suspicious-looking geophysical anomaly for inspection; this turned out being a dummy bomb that they had buried (beyond the agreed detection depth) to make sure the equipment was still working as intended (and I doing my job!).

My most recent foreign work trip was early last year to Sudan, to explore for groundwater for one of our clients. This project, deep in the desert close to Egypt, was easily one of the most amazing of my career. Technically, the project was a success (I used passive seismic methods to map the depth of wadi deposits and select drill targets) but culturally it was something else altogether. Sudanese pyramids, the Nile, different food, and lovely, amazing people. I felt fortunate to depart when I did (a couple of weeks before the start of the war) but I have been worried for the people I met and friends I made (all of whom seem to be doing well, luckily).

I will readily admit that I am a little tired of traveling these days and prefer to spend more time with my family. However, if a trip to an interesting new place comes along, I will (probably) not say no. How else am I going to come up with new content for LinkedIn ;)

2. We saw your most recent publication on identifying leaks in non-pressurised concrete pipelines using geophysical methods - what are some highlights you've had working on this project and how do you think it will impact the wider industry?

Living in Brazil between 2016 and 2019, I held a post-doctoral position at a technical university in Belo Horizonte (BH), where I taught applied geophysics to engineering students and got involved in some interesting research. The motivation for this particular project were losses of up to 40% in Brazil's water distribution network. The system selected for the project transports treated (drinking) water through sometimes older concrete pipes and is responsible for the water supply of about 2.4 million people, or almost half of the greater BH metropolitan region.

We used electrical geophysical methods as well as ground-penetrating radar to map soil wetness variations associated with suspected leaks around partly buried pipes. Overall, it was a successful project, in part because most proven methods for leak detection are for pressurized pipes, not gravity driven ones as was the case here. I cannot profess that this research is likely to change the industry as a whole, but I nevertheless took satisfaction from the fact that I convinced a few people of the potential value of geophysics for engineering and environmental ground investigations.

3. You've also worked a variety of roles in the industry, ranging from academic positions to your current consulting role. How would you say your experience has been pursuing various opportunities across the industry?

My career most definitely is not an average one, if such a thing exists. I spent most of my career in academia, but when I first came to Australia in 2014 and was ready for something new, the job market wasn't great. My move to Brazil in 2016 was not work related, and when I came back in 2019 (in my "late mid-forties" at the time), I figured that the likelihood of finding my desired job in consulting had become pretty slim!

However, I was wrong. At the advice of a friend, I sent some statements of interest around and was given a chance with Southern Geoscience Consultants. And to tell you the truth, I haven't looked back. These days, pursuing opportunities involves writing proposals, giving presentations, meeting with clients, and plenty of out-of-the-box thinking (our robot field assistant as latest example). Yup, consulting is a blast.