In my early career as an astronomer I researched hot stars, cool stars, nebulae, star formation and the interstellar medium after obtaining my PhD from Queen's University Belfast in 1995 and BSc in Physics from Newcastle University in 1991. I have over fifty examples of published work, publicly available via the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) including 12 first-author papers in leading peer-reviewed academic journals, with co-authorship of a further 20 such papers. Highlights of my research include the discovery of 37 previously unknown very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in infrared survey data, with the results from this program published in 2003, 2004 and 2007. Also in 2007 I was lead author of a paper identifying the first two brown dwarfs from the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey. I was second author on a 2008 paper which found the first two brown dwarfs in the Hyades star cluster. In 2002 I published an innovative absorption spectroscopy study of the nearest carbon star, using data from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) VLT facility at Cerro Paranal in Chile. Following a career break I now work for a local social enterprise with environmental, good work and energy saving credentials.