I was born in Liverpool, England in 1970 when the monthly mean CO₂ concentration was 325.68 ± 0.12 ppm. I studied pure & applied physics at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and graduated with a BSc (I:hons) in 1992. I obtained a PhD in applied mathematics in 1996 from the Mathematics Institute of Saint Andrews University, Scotland. I have 15 years postgraduate research experience in the fields of Earth observation, remote sensing and applied mathematics. I am a member of the Marie-Curie Alumni Association, the European Geosciences Union and the Royal Statistical Society, and I’m currently doing a postdoc on climate data in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading where I work for the Horizon 2020 FIDUCEO project.