I work in the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group at the University of Bristol, and develop innovative ways of measuring human behaviour in people's natural environment using wearable technology. We want to use this to understand more about health behaviours such as smoking and drinking. We then develop precisely targeted interventions to help people quit smoking or reduce their alcohol consumption. My recent projects include the 'stopWatch' (patented) system for passive detection of cigarette smoking, and 'dataWatch', a researcher-customisable wearable system for the active capture of behavioural data in-the-wild using repeated sampling.

I am currently developing a smartwatch-based intervention which aims to prevent smoking relapse by detecting when smoking takes place and delivering a "just-in-time" intervention message at the point of lapse, to help the smoker maintain their quit attempt.

My research is about taking a novel method and using it in a way that has practical impact and helps people improve their health, particularly for cancer patients. It's exciting to be developing something that hasn't been done in this way before, and by doing so I hope to break the ground for others to build on this work and take it further, to benefit peoples' lives.