Current Position

Botanic Garden Meise.                    Oct 2005–present

• Work package leader on the pro-iBiosphere project (www.pro-ibiosphere.eu).

• Responsible for the development and maintenance of the Virtual Herbarium of the botanic garden (www.br.fgov.be/RESEARCH/COLLECTIONS/HERBARIUM/advancedsearch.php).

• The developer of the digitised online version of the Flore d’Afrique Centrale. Involving, marking up digitised text and designing a database and a web interface to present it (http://www.br.fgov.be/RESEARCH/DATABASES/FOCA/index.php).

• Contributing IT support to various projects in the garden including the Manual of Alien Plants of Belgium (http://alienplantsbelgium.be/), OpenUp! and the Flora of Brussels (http://www.floraofbrussels.be/floraofbrussels/).

• Working on a checklist of the Flora of the D.R. Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.

• Contributing to various studies primarily on the subject of invasive and alien plants. 

Previous Employment History

Software Engineer

Accenture, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.                                  Jan 99-Sept 2003

Senior analyst/programmer on the National Insurance Recording System for the UK. One of the largest databases in Europe, where £60 billion of National Insurance contributions are recorded annually.

Libris computing Ltd., Berwick, Northumberland, UK.           Oct 97-Sept 98

Team leader responsible for development and support of software, used in libraries nationally.  Libris became insolvent September 1998.

Plant Biologist

NBL Gene Sciences, Northumberland, UK.                           May 97-Jun 97

A temporary job developing products for molecular genetics research.

Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA.                           Nov 96-Mar 97

Visiting research associate to map iron reductase genes in Arabidopsis thaliana

University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.            Sept 93-Sept 96

Postdoctoral scientist investigating the biochemistry and genetics of plant iron nutrition.

United States Dept. of Agriculture, Illinois, USA.                   Mar 91-Sept 93

Postdoctoral scientist studying the biophysics and biochemistry of photosynthesis.