Research
The research programme
The work rests on three foundations: structural dynamics, probabilistic methods and computational mechanics. They are combined to understand mechanical systems that are uncertain, disordered and complex, across scales from nanostructures to offshore foundations.
Part one
The five themes
One programme, five ways into it. Every block below is a link to that theme and to the papers filed under it.
The idea that connects them
A mechanical system whose parameters are random has an ensemble mean response that decays faster than any single realisation, because the realisations drift out of phase with one another. The mean-square response holds up. Amplitude leaves the coherent field and stays in the system.
That statement, made quantitative, turns out to describe more than oscillators. Phase spreading in time, spatial localisation in a disordered lattice, and the smearing of a band-gap edge under manufacturing tolerance are the same phenomenon observed on three different abscissae. The coherence, the decoherence scale and the apparent damping are the observables that measure it in each case.
The practical consequence for an engineer: a population of nominally identical structures shows higher apparent damping than any individual unit, and the excess follows from the parameter dispersion alone, whatever the dissipation mechanism turns out to be.
Cross-cutting concepts
- ensemble damping
- phase decoherence
- localisation
- random operators
- stochastic Green functions
- rare events
- inverse inference
- measure-based computation
Where the three foundations came from
Damping identification and generalised damping theory from 2000 onward gave the treatment of dissipation; stochastic finite elements and random matrix methods gave the treatment of uncertainty; nanoscale and multiscale mechanics gave the treatment of architecture across scales. Applying all three at once to disordered architected systems is what the current work does.
Every theme keeps its historical material, marked as foundations. The diagram above names the five themes and their subheadings, and each block links to its own page and to the papers filed under it.
Part two
Applications and engineering translation
Methods only matter when something is built, flown, financed or certified differently because of them. This is where the work has reached practice.
Where the work has been used
Application papers keep their scientific theme in the archive, filed by the contribution they make. This is the other view of the same list: the fields the methods have reached.
Aerospace structures
Composite wings and empennages, aeroelastic tailoring, probabilistic design practice at Embraer.
Wind and ocean energy
Onshore yield uncertainty, offshore foundation dynamics, monopiles under impact, wave energy harvesting.
Vibration control
Inerters, tuned mass dampers, inertial amplifiers, base isolation, seismic protection.
Energy harvesting
Piezoelectric harvesting from broadband random excitation, nonlinear and bistable harvesters, MEMS devices.
Civil infrastructure
Bridges, tall buildings, pile foundations in liquefiable soil, FRP decks, solar panel structures.
Defence and advanced materials
Mechanical metamaterials for attenuation, assessed with QinetiQ at Farnborough.
Nanoscale sensing
Mass and inertia sensing with vibrating microcantilevers and two-dimensional material resonators.
Railway engineering
Uncertainty quantification taught to practitioners at the High-speed Train Research Centre in China.
From first paper to design practice
1998 to 2026
Twenty entries, of three kinds. Translation into engineering practice is the point of this section, so those carry a copper marker. The results that made each translation possible, and the recognition that followed, are marked more quietly. Grant values, references and the wider record are in the full CV.
Engineering translation 9 · Result behind it 6 · Recognition 5
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1998
Result behind it
First journal papers: dynamics of structures with uncertain properties
Two papers in the same year set the question the whole programme has worked on since. One treats vibration energy flow through trusses whose members are random, the other the dynamic stiffness of randomly parametered beams. Structural dynamics and probability were separate literatures at the time.
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2001
Result behind it
PhD, Cambridge: Damping Models for Structural Vibration
The thesis is the most cited doctoral thesis in the history of the mechanics division of the Cambridge University Engineering Department. It gave the treatment of dissipation that the later industrial work depends on: generalised damping, identified from measurement.
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2004
Recognition
EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship on probabilistic structural dynamics
Five years of independent funding, held 2004 to 2009. It turned a thesis subject into a research programme and paid for the wind-energy and aerospace work that followed.
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2005-2009
Engineering translation
Garrad Hassan, now DNV GL: uncertainty in wind energy prediction
Technical consultant to the wind industry in Bristol, building the first rigorous mathematical framework for quantifying uncertainty in wind velocity prediction for onshore turbines. It predicts the variance around the ten-year average energy yield, which is the number a wind farm is financed on. The method went into commercial software and internal documents, and a probabilistic yield estimate is what makes project approval, community consent and investment possible.
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2006
Recognition
EPSRC Ideas Factory on Scientific Uncertainty and Decision Making
Member of the winning project team. The sandpit format put structural dynamics next to decision science and statistics, which is where the treatment of rare events and probabilistic attribution in the current work began.
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2007
Recognition
Philip Leverhulme Prize, and the Chair of Aerospace Engineering at Swansea
The prize is given to an outstanding scholar under 35 and it cited the wind energy uncertainty work. The chair at Swansea followed in the same year, and the group that produced the metamaterials and energy harvesting work was built there.
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2009
Result behind it
Piezoelectric energy harvesting from broadband random vibration
Harvesters had been analysed under harmonic excitation, and the real world supplies broadband noise. Treating the input as a random process and the harvester as a coupled electromechanical oscillator gave closed-form power expressions that designers could use. The Institute of Physics named it a favourite and included it in Smart Materials and Structures Highlights 2009.
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2009
Result behind it
Continuum mechanics applied to a single graphene sheet
The paper argued that continuum principles hold at atomic scale and produced analytical predictions of graphene's elastic properties from molecular mechanics. It contradicted the prevailing view at the time and became one of the field-defining papers in the mechanics of two-dimensional materials.
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2010
Recognition
Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award
Held for five years. The award supports researchers of outstanding achievement whom the UK wishes to retain or attract.
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2012
Engineering translation
Embraer: uncertainty in the dynamics of a composite H-tail
The first contract of what became a decade as technical consultant to Embraer Aircraft Corporation on reduced-order and probabilistic methods. A composite empennage is exactly where manufacturing scatter and structural dynamics meet, so it was the natural first problem.
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2013
Result behind it
Two-volume monograph on generalised damping models
Structural Dynamic Analysis with Generalized Damping Models, Analysis and Identification, Wiley ISTE. Between them the two volumes are held by more than 1800 academic libraries, and they are the standard reference on generalised damping models.
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2014
Engineering translation
Embraer: robust aeroelastic tailoring under combined uncertainties
Aeroelastic tailoring sets the fibre directions in a composite wing so that bending and twisting couple favourably. Doing it robustly means the chosen layup has to survive the scatter in the material and the process, across the whole tolerance band.
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2016
Engineering translation
Probabilistic model updating reaches aeronautical practice
Probabilistic Finite Element Model Updating Using Bayesian Statistics: Applications to Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering, with T Marwala and I Boulkaibet, Wiley-Blackwell. Model updating had been a deterministic fitting exercise. Treating it as inference gives an engineer a distribution over the corrected model, which is what a certification argument needs. Held by more than 760 academic libraries.
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2018
Engineering translation
Embraer: stochastic multiscale methods and the benchmark composite wing
The decade of work with Embraer changed how the company treats uncertainty in composite structure design, influencing the design practice behind their business jet lineup, and produced a benchmark composite wing model that is now used as a standard test case for new methods.
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2018-2020
Engineering translation
Four Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowships build the metamaterials group
Four European Commission fellowships in three years, on active piezoelectric metamaterials, on nonlinear energy sinks for flow-induced vibration, on piezoelectric joints in tall buildings, and on further postdoctoral work. Metamaterials moved from a side interest to the largest theme in the group.
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2020
Result behind it
Apparent negative Young's moduli under dynamic conditions
A lattice driven dynamically can appear to have a negative elastic modulus. Explaining the effect turned an apparent contradiction into a design variable, and it opened the band-gap and inertial-amplification work that followed.
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2021
Recognition
Chair of Engineering Mechanics, University of Glasgow
Appointed in October 2021, and Head of the Infrastructure and Environment Research Division in the James Watt School of Engineering from July 2023.
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2023
Engineering translation
Digital twins given a dynamic systems treatment
Digital Twin: A Dynamic System and Computing Perspective, with R Ganguli, S Chakraborty and M Ganguli, CRC Press. Most writing on digital twins is about data pipelines. This treats the twin as a dynamic system, which is what decides whether its predictions can be trusted, and it keeps identifiability at the centre of the question.
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2024
Engineering translation
von Karman Award for International Cooperation in Aeronautics
Awarded by the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences to the Aeroelastic Tailoring Global Partnership led by Embraer, of which the uncertainty quantification and probabilistic design work was part. It is the clearest external confirmation that the aerospace collaboration changed practice.
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2025-2026
Engineering translation
Offshore wind risk advice, and ocean-wave energy harvesting
Technical advisor to Renew Risk in London from June 2025, carrying the wind-energy uncertainty work into insurance and risk assessment for offshore assets. A European Commission fellowship awarded in March 2026 takes the harvesting work to nonlinear chaotic and bistable pendulum devices for ultra low-frequency ocean waves.