I was born and raised in Northern Ireland. Once I left school I attended the University of Edinburgh where I obtained a first-class qualification in Master of Theoretical Physics, it was a five-year integrated masters course. During my Master's project I was introduced to the world of applied mathematics such as computational physics and bioinformatics. I knew that this was the area in which I wanted to do research.

I had also decided that it would be a dream of mine to be able to combine my academic/career goals with my desire to see the other side of the world — Australia. I found Mike's lab online and reached out to him. Here I will be utilising novel neural networks like deep learning approaches for the improved prediction and classification of molecular traits.