index.html

---
layout: home
title: Engineering artificial life from the bottom-up
author_profile: true
header:
  overlay_image: /assets/images/headerimg.jpg
  overlay_filter: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6)
  caption: "Nature Communications **11** 1442 (2020)"
  show_overlay_excerpt: true
  actions:
    - label: "More Info"
      url: /research/
classes: wide
---

<p align="justify" >Life appeared on planet Earth around 4 billion of years ago, during a process known as <i>abiogenesis</i> or the Origin of Life. My research studies how did this happen, and aims to apply some of those processes into the design of bio-inspired robots. If we know that life happened already at least once, why cannot we use that knowledge to create artifial life? You can read more about this on the <a href="/research/" >Research page</a>.</p>

<div class="notice--success">
<h1>About me</h1>
<p align="justify" >I am a Robotics Lecturer at the <a href="https://www.gcu.ac.uk/">Glasgow Caledonian University</a>, working in the <a href="https://www.gcu.ac.uk/cebe/aboutus/departments/mechanicalengineering/">Department of Mechanical Engineering</a>. My current research aims to create generative models of prebiotic processes, and then use artificial evolution to emulate <i>in silico</i> the Origin of Life. Before this I was part of the <a href="http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/">Cronin Group</a>, first as a PhD and then as a postdoc, where I built robots to emulate the Origin of Life in real-world experiments.</p>

<p align="justify">More broadly, I enjoy building autonomous systems that *do* things, and I enjoy working in the intersection between AI, Computer Vision and 3D-printing. If you want to know more about me you can read my <a href="/assets/pdfs/cv.pdf" >CV</a>.</p>
</div>