Apart from a year or two in the Middle East when I was very young I spent all of my childhood in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, UK. I left school in 1990 and began a carpentry apprenticeship working for a company called Inn Development and Signage (I.D.S. Ltd). To my knowledge IDS are not in existence now but they taught me so much in the short time I was with them. Between IDS and my college classes, required by my apprenticeship, I learned a great deal about carpentry and basic construction. Unfortunately I completed just a single year of my apprenticeship before I was made redundant from IDS. Without a job I couldn't continue my apprenticeship and because of the economic recession of the early 1990's the only realistic alternative for me was to return to education.
University was really a last minute decision as I hadn't given it too much thought up until that point, but the chance was there so off I went to Portsmouth and after a few years I graduated with a degree in Applied Physics. I returned to University at Lancaster in Lancashire to study for a Masters Degree in Satellite Communications & Space Environment. This was just a year long course and in December 2003 I gained my Masters. The opportunity arose to stay at Lancaster University to do Ph.D. research within the Space Plasma Environment and Radio Science (SPEARS) Group. I was awarded a Ph.D. in Physics in 2011.
