Profile

Mostly I teach, but I am a better teacher because I am also active in research.     I teach chemical engineering (mostly things to do with heat and pressure), and I do research on food, mostly foods based on cereals (e.g. wheat). One of my main areas is bubbles in bread! Bread is the world’s most important food (maybe this isn’t something you’ve thought about before, but it really is).  But what is so special about bread?  We like bread because it is full of bubbles – they give it a nice texture when we eat it and allow it to be formed into interesting shapes, and different breads have different bubble structures that give them distinctive shapes and textures.  Wheat is unique in that it is the only cereal that gives good raised bread; it is for this reason that wheat is the world’s most important cereal, because we like bread, and we like our bread aerated.  Hence bubbles are the world’s most important food ingredient!  Most food research is done by chemists, but bubbles are physical things, and chemical engineers have the right combination of skills to be able to make a unique contribution to understanding bubble behaviour in foods.  And lots of other foods also have bubbles, including the luxurious ones – champagne, whipped cream, ice cream, Aero bars!

Typically in one day or over a couple of days I would: lecture about heat transfer to a class of over 200; meet with design project groups of 7 to guide them in designing chemical plants; meet with individual research students and post-doctoral researchers studying a range of subjects, all based around cereals as a raw material for both food and non-food products; review research papers to advise on whether they are of sufficiently high scientific quality for publication; then, when I get time, write my own research papers!