Profile
Stephen Kelly
My CV
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About Me:
Hi, I’m Stephen! I’m an oceanographer, a guitarist and a cat lover.
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I’m a research scientist at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, and when I’m not doing science I like to play guitar and korfball (a Dutch sport kind of like basketball / netball).
I’m also a cat lover. The one in my photo is called Izzy, and I met her at a cat café during my lunch break at the Ocean Sciences conference this year – best lunch break ever!
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I use computer models to understand how the oceans are changing. Most of my work uses a technique called “Lagrangian modelling” – it’s basically like dropping lots of (virtual!) rubber ducks into the ocean to see where they might go.
I’ve used this technique for lots of reasons – perhaps the most exciting one is understanding where oil spills are likely to go. This is important because, if/when an accident happens, we need to know which places are at risk. For my PhD, I did some theoretical work looking at what might happen if there’s an oil spill in the Arctic Ocean, and I also did some emergency work looking at where a real oil spill in the East China Sea would go.
Other things I’ve looked at include how invasive species might cross the Arctic Ocean, and how some currents in the Indian Ocean could be affected by climate change.
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My Typical Day:
I work best later in the day, so I’m usually the last person into the office in the mornings! I work with computer models, and most of my day is writing code to start model experiments or to analyse the results from them. When I’m finished (and everyone else has gone home), I end up with lots of cool and very colourful graphs.
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I’m not a morning person at all, so I’m usually the last person into the office! My days often start with meetings – the most interesting ones are when my colleagues and I are discussing / trying to interpret different plots that we’ve made previously.
After that, I usually spend most of my day writing code. Sometimes to set up a model experiment, sometimes to analyse the results of the experiments. This usually ends up with some cool plots, and I quite enjoy making them look pretty and colourful as well. This doesn’t always work though – writing code very rarely goes right first time, so a lot of my time is spent fixing my mistakes.
My least favourite thing to do is writing (as in writing words, rather than code), but it’s very important. I’ll usually set aside a day or two per week to just focus on doing that. This is the bit where I explain not just what I’ve been doing, but also how it fits in with what other people have done before. It’s a slow process for me, but giving myself little rewards for getting specific things done helps – usually that’s just a walk around the common now we’re working from home.
It’s normally quite late by the time I’ve finished, but I prefer that to starting earlier. If I’m in the office, I get the bus home (or far too often I miss it and end up walking), make myself dinner and watch a bit of TV to relax.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Bad at following instructions
What did you want to be after you left school?
A scientist, but not the kind of scientist I am now! Back then, I wanted to be either a particle physicist or an astronomer.
Were you ever in trouble at school?
No, I was a quiet nerdy kid who didn't really enjoy school. But now I'm doing an awesome job that takes me all around the world!
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Nirvana
What's your favourite food?
Steak and chips
Tell us a joke.
What do you get if you cross a rubbish joke with a rhetorical question?
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