Hello.

I'm an Assistant Professor at Northumbria University, where I work in the NUSTEM outreach and research group. I also teach in the School of Computer Sciences. In the Digital Learning Lab research group, my interests include playful pedagogies, informal and family learning, and building the technologies needed for those: broadly, Computational Tinkering.

Long ago I studied Physics, but soon fell into television. I produced science and engineering series for all the main UK broadcasters (and several of the big internationals). Subsequently, I've run communication training on three continents and for the likes of McKinsey. With NESTA I ran a national schools' science film competition; for the NCCPE I nurtured a network of academics working behind-the-scenes to support BBC Science production; with Edinburgh Science Festival I worked on the largest science communication training scheme in the world, in Abu Dhabi; for the Royal Institution I kickstarted video production efforts.

I like to work out what's fun in a situation, spot the part I really want to do myself – then give that to children and families.

Links

Teaching

For 2025/6, Northumbria undergraduates studying Computer Science, Networks & Cyber Security or Games Computing will find me on the module teams for:

I'd be keen to supervise final year projects at the intersection of Internet of Things, computational tinkering, interactive installations, family learning, and embedded systems. I've several project ideas around counting footfall in visitor attractions, image processing for generative art, and distributed audio installations.

Office hours: I'm usually available on campus Tuesday afternoon through Thursday, but my office is almost impossible to find from the School of Computer Sciences. Students are welcome to drop me a line on Teams, or via email.

Example Work

NUSTEM (2014–)

A decade and counting of innovative, award-winning university STEM engagement and research, working long-term and through partnerships to enact and support changes in schools and beyond.

NUSTEM is my 'day job,' so to speak.

Connect (2019–ongoing?)

Misusing Internet of Things technologies to make network-connected cardboard mechanisms, with googly eyes. A family learning project by NUSTEM, in collaboration with the Life Science Centre and funded by North of Tyne Combined Authority. Watch out for a servo animation library, for both Arduino and MicroPython, coming any year now.

Heart of Maker Faire

A glorious interactive installation, made for Maker Faire UK 2017. We measured visitors' heart rates while they wrote a message about something they love. Sealed in a jar, their message was added to a pulsating wall of love, lights under each jar beating at their originators' individual heart rates.

Mini Mangonel

Possibly the best thing I've ever designed: an absolutely minimalist catapult mechanism which anyone can make in a few minutes, and that's cheap enough to give away. The best part? It works, but it's rubbish. So the real challenge is making it not rubbish.

Ri Channel (2011–ongoing)

I'm one of those people who seems unable to escape the Royal Institution's gravitational pull. I worked a gap year there, then returned 15 years later to produce the Christmas Lectures, and a few years after that to kickstart their video production efforts. The bespoke (and innovative) website we built is long gone, but the ongoing YouTube channel for which we argued now has well over 1.5m subscribers.

TV Production

Happily, my broadcast work was long enough ago that none of my students saw it. Much of my work was science programmes for children: I made long-running series The Big Bang and How2 for Children's ITV, and also Scrap It! for Discovery Kids and Scope for RTÉ. There are, inevitably, many stories. My worst series received a BAFTA nomination, while an RTS Education Award led to my accidentally making a fantasy drama maths education show, which was big in Brazil. Apparently.

Teacher training films (2010 – ?)

A sporadic collaboration with physics teacher and author Alom Shaha, these teacher training films have something of a cult following. We made them over many years for many clients, including all the learned societies, and most recently with my currently group at NUSTEM. There's no single archive of them all and some of the repositories of them have terrible quality copies, but it's now 2025 and they're still used in teacher training courses around the world. We wonder if a majority of UK A-level physics students have seen the jelly baby wave machine I invented?