In 2010 I realised that I needed a place to gather my thoughts, plans and projects, and that I often needed to deliver work through a corporate entity. So Isometrica was born in 2010 and through Isometrica I’ve managed to work with some really great people, help solve some truly challenging problems and all the time have fun doing so.
Via Isometrica I built a great team to work on MapCO2, a novel way to calculate the CO2 emissions generated by agriculture. At a macro level, land use data can be used to calculate net carbon emissions, but this approach requires gross approximations, particularly in rural areas which account for 72% of the UK area. Land use across a farm unit will often change over the year and this further compounds the problem.
Micro-level tools can help to calculate a carbon footprint for households and businesses, including agricultural businesses. These models, however, are extremely detailed, requiring a lot of effort to gather the data required. These micro-level models are hard to use making uptake patchy and although valuable to the individual they will not help gather a regional picture.
MapCO2’s meso-scale models used a GIS-based approach to assemble land use on a field-by-field basis and then derive CO2-equivalent emissions for each parcel of land that can then be aggregated to a farm unit, a region, an estate or a farming collective.
Following on from the work on MapCO2 an opportunity arose to propose a comprehensive research program to explore a horticulture challenge where around 20% of seedlings failed after planting out. Assembling a multidisciplinary team the research project included soil analysis using MRI scanning, microbiome analysis using genome sequencing and chemical composition using conventional analysis techniques, all supported by a comprehensive weather monitoring system based on LoRaWAN. Unfortunately the project is on hold due to funding challenges, but the insights gained while planning the project have already proved valuable.
Alongside work on environmental issues, since my time at Genomics England working on the 100,000 Genomes Project I have retained a keen interest in genomics, in particular multi-site federation of research data and the impact of distributed and flexible data governance. This led to an exciting two years with Zetta Genomics helping to build the company from scratch and raise a very succesful seed investment round.
Most recently, with the rapid developments in machine learning and large language models, I’ve been working on how best to deploy AI in regulated industries.
If you too are excited by any of my areas of interest then please get in touch!