Professional summary
Ben is an Environmental Scientist who works with state-of-the-art instruments that allow us to measure pollutants such as volatile organic compounds or particulate matter in real time. Being able to visualise how the levels of these compounds change instantaneously has allowed us to gain new insights into the way air pollutants are emitted, transformed and deposited from various environments including cities and forests. We've worked all around the world, in Megacities such as London, Delhi and Beijing, to establish how well emission inventories perform against our measured pollutant fluxes. We've also headed to tropical forests in Borneo and the Amazon, to see which gases the forests are releasing to better understand how regional chemistry affects aerosol formation, cloud formation and rainfall.
Many of the compounds we measure are not just pollutants, they are used in the natural world for communication between plants and insects - even us humans use them! They can also warn of illness and disease in both humans and animals. Ben has a particular interest in deciphering these chemical messages and trying to bring this invisible language to life. His current interests include investigating how air pollutants like ozone degrade the floral odours used by pollinators to find flowers and how by sampling the breath of cattle we might be able to detect the early signs of respiratory disease.