Hi, my name is Ian and I am a brand new PhD student at the University of Bristol. My research has not taken a definite form and route right now so I am just learning as much as I can.

My main interest of study right now is about nuclear forensics. The name is a bit of a misnomer because it implies some sort of criminal activity. I try to study, develop and implement various physical methods to gather evidence on nuclear radiation. For example, my group has UAVs doing high quality photometry overlaid with radiation maps. This gives a much better resolution and allows us to find hotspots. Right now, I am trying to bring this idea for ROVs (underwater remote controlled vehicles). I am also studying mass spectrometry techniques that will help us characterize the radioactive products that we sample from places like Fukushima.

My work is exciting because I get to go out to the field. I am required to climb hills, abseil down caves and drop detectors down mine shafts. I get to visit places like Japan and Somalia. It is a great big world out there and it is fortunate I get to see it. It is my hope that I learn as much as I can and bring back all this expertise back to Singapore.