I have been interested in aircraft for as long as I can remember, and always wanted to be a fighter pilot. Poor eyesight blocked this dream and because I enjoyed maths and physics at school, I decided to aim for aeronautical engineering. After getting a place at Southampton University I joined British Aerospace as an undergraduate trainee and during my training worked on Nimrod and 748 aircraft and on future projects, one of which became the Airbus A400M.

Several years later, after working on the design and performance analysis of gas turbines and then automotive CAD in the UK and Germany, I enjoyed a season working as a ski guide in the Trois Vallees in the French Alps.

I had followed the development of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for several years and decided that I should get involved in this fascinating and rapidly-developing field. So I took a Masters degree in CFD at Imperial College London in 1990.

Since then I have worked in CFD at Ford and Airbus, and also on software development at the CAD software company Computervision (later Parametric Technology) and at TerraQuest - a land and property information management company where I developed a data management system that is being used on the Cross London Rail Link (‘CrossRail’) project. During this time I set up an office in an apartment in the Trois Vallees and worked there for a whole winter (again!) - the only problem was that there was too much work to do and not enough time for skiing and learning to snowboard.

What do you do on the project?

After spending over a year assisting Ben Evans with CFD work I have recently joined the project full-time. I am now working on the whole CFD process, from producing models in the CAD system though to running the CFD solver and processing the results.

How did you get involved?

Whilst working at Ford in the mid-1990s I met Jeremy Bliss who was working on ThrustSSC. It was only when I saw the car in the desert in 1997 that I realised what a fantastic and exciting project it was and kicked myself for not getting involved in some way.

When I read about BLOODHOUND I was determined to get involved, having not expected there to be another Land Speed Record project after ThrustSSC. I immediately got in touch with Ben Evans at Swansea University and a short time later joined the team as a volunteer, helping him with the CFD.

Interests:

I am a very keen skier, and fly helicopters (though I’ve been too busy recently), holding private and commercial licences. I also try to play cricket.