Hello! I am Richard, a 2nd year PhD student at the Institute of Astronomy. I am interested in planetary dynamics and its applications to planetary habitability and post-main sequence planetary systems. I am also interested in Astrobiology and understanding the role of impacts in origins of life scenarios. Here’s map of places I’ve given a talk!

Research groups

I am a member of 3 exciting research groups:

• Rocky Worlds: WD Planetary Group. Investigating the formation of planets, planetary composition and planetary systems around white dwarfs.
• Planetary Astrochemistry Lab. We experimentally simulate planetary environments and use them to test prebiotic chemistry.
• Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe. We aim to develop a deeper understanding of life, its emergence, and its distribution in the Universe.

Recent projects

My most recent work evaluated origins scenarios that require multiple impacts in a single location, an attractive way to produce cyanide, cyanamde and cyanoacetylene. We modelled the atmospheric entry of cometary impactors, and used the crater record to constrain the number of overlapping craters on the early-Earth - read more here.

Before this, we investigated the cometary delivery of prebiotic molecules to rocky exoplanets - see more here. This publication was accompanied by a University of Cambridge press release.