Joel’s work is all about scaling up data science, data collection and data processing so that Nesta’s data pipelines are robust and can be automatically deployed to very large datasets. He is leading Nesta’s Data Engineering team to develop an open data infrastructure which allows data scientists to care less about the infrastructure itself so that they can focus on their research. He has worked on projects including the Open Jobs Observatory, EURITO and Creative Nation.

Joel has a PhD in Particle Physics from his time at the University of Manchester and CERN, Switzerland. He went on to take up two postdoctoral research positions in Sheffield and Padova, Italy, before working as a Data Scientist for the Department for Communities and Local Government.

In his spare time, Joel enjoys rock-climbing, language learning, and running. He hit the peak of his running career some time ago, by completing a 100 km run from Manchester to Sheffield, although nowadays he says that he'll settle for a run around the block!