Adrian Hayes FIScT

Senior Technical Officer

An engineer providing technical support for the Department with interests in researching novel solutions to the many technical problems in Physical Geography.

Biography

Adrian Hayes is an Engineering Scientist working mainly in the area of Physical Geography. He has professional qualifications from the City of Westminster College, obtaining Fellowship of his Institute with a dissertation on Temperature Measurement and Control at sub-zero temperatures.

He joined the Department in 1996 leaving a long term career in Engineering Science allied to low temperatures in Medicine and Biology. He has several publications relating to equipment design in this field and continues this theme in Physical Geography where the sensing elements and measurement techniques are similar to those used in Cryobiology.

Research and other activities

Research

My continuing research interests are: monitoring of shallow water processes. The current research is centred on the measurement of wave direction and current at sites where other parameters are being measured. The continued reduction in the cost of radio telemetry modules is slowly making remote data collection for individual sensors a possibility; however, in most cases, wire connection to local logging devices still remains the least expensive option. The use of mobile phone technology can be harnessed in areas where a network signal is available, but in areas where this is not possible, WiFi communication has become a real possibility over short distances. (~1Km)

The analysis of Volcanic gases by Infra Red Spectrometry and commercially available FTIR equipment has given scope for novel solutions in a variety of diverse locations. Research has been carried out in the Antarctic using enclosed mini computers continuously logging the output from Infra Red Spectrometers. More recently scanning devices have been designed in the laboratory which have made the collection of data from Volcano plumes in Sicily and the analysis of aircraft exhaust gases at various locations much easier.

Future possible projects include the provision of Instrumentation for climate studies in Tibet and possible extensions to established studies on the hydrological conditions of two river valleys in Thailand.

Administration

I am the Departmental Health and Safety Officer and consider this a very important element of my work. I am the Secretary of the Safety and Security Committee.

I am also responsible for the administration of the building maintenance and with the technical assistance of Mr Theobald, Building Services Technician, am able to attend to most minor matters. I liaise frequently with the University's Estate Management and Building Services on matters of minor and major repair works and act as key contact for major refurbishments.

Laboratory and Fieldwork

Coming from a long term laboratory background, I continue to take an interest in them from a technical viewpoint. In close collaboration with Dr Boreham and Mr Rolfe, several items of instrumentation have been made and used for laboratory studies; most recently a modification to a recently purchased Magnetic Susceptibility Meter was modified to make a vertical scanner for large samples containing small embedded metal artifacts. The details of this will be published in the near future. A wheeled track for large horizontal core samples is currently being made for use with the same sensing loop. The Department has a Flume for Hydrological studies and many additional items have been designed and build for experimentation in this.

I have been involved in many field trips since joining the Department, mostly involving installation of sensors and data loggers. Monitoring equipment is frequently designed and built in the Department, as are the means to support them in the field. Most recent work has been at GlenFeshie in the Cairngorms where a data communications system was established to communicate visual images of the changes taking place in a braided river. Previous installations outside the UK have taken place in France, Sweden and Venice and Sicily. There is a 2^nd year compulsory residential fieldtrip which I have organised for the past 6 years, travelling to Mallorca in the Balearics. Most of my contact is driven by the requirements of Researchers and PhD students, the Undergraduate Field trip is the only contact I have with them and for that reason has been very valuable to me.