Chris is the Deputy Principal of Research and Impact and an internationally-recognised researcher in the climate and Earth sciences. With 30 years of experience in the Higher Education sector in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, including 12 years board experience, Chris is responsible for leading the strategic transformation of research culture, performance, and external partnerships to deliver breakthrough research that tackle the world's biggest challenges – transforming climate action, revolutionising health outcomes, and pioneering robotics and other technologies that will shape our future. In this role, Chris champions the development and deployment of technologies and ideas into industry, governments, and society at speed and scale.

Before joining Heriot-Watt University, Chris was the Pro Vice-Chancellor of Research at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). While in Sydney, he was a Non-Executive Director of Cicada, Australia’s leading incubator for startups and scale-ups working on science and engineering (deeptech) innovations, and a Non-Executive Director of the NSW Government’s Environment Protection Authority (EPA) to help deliver a thriving and healthy environment for the state of New South Wales. To help accelerate the transition to a circular economy with net-zero carbon pollution, he was a founding director, inventor and is now a scientific advisor to the New Zealand-based cleantech company CarbonScape which has developed technology to covert biomass into locally-produced, sustainable, carbon-negative bioengineered graphite for lithium-ion batteries. 

Chris has received numerous awards, including the Australian Academy of Sciences Frederick Stone Award (2014), the Geological Society of London’s Bigsby Medal (2009), the Philip Levehulme Prize (2008), and the inaugural Sir Nicholas Shackleton Medal (2007) from the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA). Between 2011 and 2015, Chris held a prestigious Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship at the University of New South Wales, Sydney (UNSW) and is a member of the INTernational radiocarbon CALibration group (IntCal). He has over 35,000 citations with an h-index of 64 and a Field-Weighted Citation Impact of 11.8 (2019-2024). These statistics have been generated from over 250 scientific papers (14 papers in Nature and Science, 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 3 in Nature Geoscience, 5 in Nature Communications, and 1 in Science Advances). 

Described as the "new David Livingstone" by The Saturday Times and compared to Malcolm Gladwell by Publishers Weekly, Chris is dedicated to sharing the value of research to the public. He is the author of one textbook, five books and contributes regularly to major media outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, and the BBC. Chris is also the host of the podcast series "Unf*cking the Future" produced with Imagine Entertainment and iHeart Media. Speaking to entrepreneurs, inventors, politicians, and activists around the world, the show explores the climate reality our planet is facing today and the solutions each of us can take now to save it. Guests include billionaire and entrepreneur Tom Steyer, Bill Nye (Netflix’s “the Science Guy”), activist and model Sabrina Elba, Hollywood director Adam McKay, and the inspirational Maggie Baird.

Chris is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, the Geological Society of London, the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Society of New South Wales, Advance HE and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.