I help make nuclear systems secure by design—and bring the world together to keep them that way.
For more than a decade, I have worked at the intersection of nuclear science, critical infrastructure, engineering and computer security. My path began at ANSTO, where I became absorbed by a deceptively simple question: how can computer security become part of engineering practice, rather than something added after the most important design decisions have already been made?
That question grew into a broader professional practice. I have led the development of practical standards, training and governance frameworks shaped through international consensus and published through the IAEA and the wider UN system. Just as importantly, I have helped build the national and international expert networks that turn guidance into sustained practice.
Standards matter, but documents alone do not change outcomes. People must be able to understand them, challenge them and apply them within the realities of complex organisations and engineered systems.
Much of my work therefore involves translation, not simplifying complexity away, but turning complex risks into shared problems that engineers, security specialists, operators and decision-makers can reason about and solve together. Effective cooperation isn’t a nice-to-have; it is how resilient systems are built.
In my technical practice, I use function-based systems thinking to integrate safety and security from the outset. Rather than asking only whether the expected controls are present, I ask whether the design delivers genuine risk reduction and whether it will continue to do so as technologies, operations and threats change.
I am also interested in emerging technologies, not simply in what they can do, but in the vulnerabilities, assumptions and new relationships they introduce. I explore how risk arises through interactions between people, software, information and engineered systems, and build practical tools that make those interactions visible and help different disciplines reason about them together.
The same curiosity shapes how I explore the world.
Through travel, photography and writing, I look for experiences that unsettle familiar perspectives and reveal something new about places, institutions and everyday life. I document some of those shifts here.
Whether the subject is nuclear security, complex systems or the experience of a place, I share what I learn because knowledge and creativity become more useful when they circulate. Wherever possible, I release my work under permissive licences so that others can use it, challenge it and build upon it.
Connect
I value thoughtful dialogue across disciplines, particularly conversations that lead to collaboration, constructive disagreement or simply a better question. You are always welcome to reach out.
The views expressed here are personal and reflect my perspective at a particular moment in time. They may evolve—as all ideas should—and do not represent the positions of any organisation with which I am associated.
