I am currently involved in working in the Experimental Volcanology Laboratory at the University of Liverpool. Here I am examining how fluids and gases ascend through a volcanic conduit and lead to a volcanic eruption.This work involves working with a team of researchers using uniaxial, triaxial and permeability apparatus to understand the properties of rock before, during and after fracturing. To accompany these data I have also been recording acoustic emissions during experiments to understand how rocks fracture under different stress regimes. To compliment this I have also been using software such as COMSOL to model how rocks behave under stresses from dykes and magma chambers in the field.

A research position funded by the NERC PURE program which aims to enhance the visualisation of risk, specifically in Cambodia. This project works together with the Catholic Agency For Overseas Development and Aon Benfield to improve the visualisation of risk to better inform decision makers during disaster scenarios. To understand current work and the data available in Cambodia I initially visited and interviewed key workers within non-governmental organisations and government departments in Phnon Penh.To validate and gain feedback on the outcomes of this project I also organised a workshop in Phnom Penh. This involved delegates from non-governmental organisations, government departments and commercial organisations, who discussed how this project could be used to enhance disaster risk reduction in Cambodia. This work has also been applied to volcanic risk, specifically in Indonesia and was presented at the 2014 Cities on Volcanoes conference in Yoygakarta, Indonesia.Wall, R.J., Edwards, S.J., Crowley, K., Weir, B. and Kilburn, C.R.J. 2014. Visualising multiple volcanic risks for commercial, humanitarian and development applications. Oral presentation. Cities on Volcanoes 7, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.The website for this work is here (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/abuhc/research/Risk_Visualisation)

A short-term research post investigating the different aspects of shale gas research at University College London. The aim of which was to bring together each group into the UCL Shale Gas Hub and advertise this work in the website (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/earth-sciences/research/shale-gas-hub) and present it at the 10th Euroconference on Rock Physics and Rock Mechanics.

“Precursors to volcanic eruptions in extensional stress fields”• Supervised by Dr Christopher Kilburn and Prof. Philip Meredith• UK Scholarship funded by National Environmental Research Council (NERC)• Viva examination by Prof. David Pyle and Dr Philip BensonThis work combines seismic data from volcanoes in extensional stress fields and complimentary laboratory work undertaken at UCL Rock Physics Labs using triaxial and acoustic emission apparatus, with the aim of improving forecasts for these volcanoes.During this PhD I developed skills in analysing and visualising data, such as earthquakes in geographical information systems such as ArcGIS and precursory trends in Excel and OriginPlot. Experimental work required using the UCL triaxial apparatus and Vallen acoustic emission software to examine acoustic emissions patterns and locations during deformation. To communicate this research I have also developed skills in writing abstracts and the final thesis and also developing skills for presenting my work at both national and international conferences.My most recent conference proceeding is:Wall, R.J., Kilburn, C.R.J., Meredith, P.G. 2013. Identifying the form of precursory trends before eruptions. reducing uncertainty with rock-physics experiments. Oral presentation. IAVCEI, Kagoshima, Japan.In addition to the PhD I also developed the Hazard Centre website to present research being done in this department and also for individual project, which can be found at these addresses http://www.ucl.ac.uk/abuhc, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/volcanoscope/I particularly enjoy communicating my research to non-scientific communities and have had the opportunity to talk about my research on podcasts (http.//podacademy.org/podcasts/the-earth-is-not-so-solid/) and also at book events that have a volcanic theme. I have also performed as part of Bright Club, a comedy event, where PhDs and lecturers perform stand up comedy on their area of research.

Volunteered for a 9 week internship at the Geophysics/Astrophysics department of the National Museum of Natural History, Luxembourg, supervised by Dr Nicolas de’Oreye de Latemange. This involved processing spacebourne radar interferograms (InSAR), the target of which was African volcanoes. From this I gained experience in using General Mapping Tool (GMT) and ENVI software to determine changes in deformation at selected volcanoes (Nyiragongo, Mt Cameroon and Mt Fogo).