My work explores the extreme physics of mass transfer and accretion within compact interacting binaries. Because these close stellar systems act as highly dynamic high-energy laboratories, they allow us to test whether accretion processes are scale-invariant across the cosmos: from forming stars to supermassive black holes. This core fascination with compact binaries naturally bridges my research into two key frontiers of modern astrophysics. First, as these stellar remnants orbit in tight configurations, they serve as primary sources of gravitational waves in our Galaxy. I model their gravitational wave emission for future space missions like LISA and use ground-based telescope arrays like BlackGEM to to characterise their electromagnetic counterpart. Second, to process the massive volumes of time-series data generated by these missions and large-scale sky surveys (including 4MOST and LSST), I develop and apply machine learning methods to discover and classify rare astronomical transients.

I am an Associate Professor in the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy at Durham University. My research journey has led me to faculty and research positions worldwide. I have previously held faculty positions at Texas Tech University and the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

I actively collaborate within several international astronomical consortia and space-based missions. I am a Council Member representing the Astrophysics Working Group for the upcoming LISA gravitational wave observatory. Furthermore, I serve as a PI-level member of the BlackGEM wide-field telescope array dedicated to identifying optical counterparts of gravitational wave mergers. I am also UK Affiliate member of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), and coordinate the Science Data Centre planning for the proposed GRINTA gamma-ray transient mission as UK PI.

I held a Humboldt Fellowship at the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, a FWO Pegasus Marie Curie Fellowship at the Institute of Astronomy at KU Leuven in Belgium, and a postdoctoral research role in the Department of Astrophysics at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

I completed my BSc in Mathematics with Astronomy, followed by my MPhil PDF and PhD PDF in the Astronomy Group at the University of Southampton.