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Student Projects

I supervise student projects in my area of research at all levels: Part II, MPhil/Part III, and PhD. If you’re bright, motivated, and excited about the topics below, come join my research group!

I’m a new associate professor, having started only in 2024, but I have a fair bit of experience supervising student projects:

I’ve also examined 7 PhD theses, 8 master’s dissertations, and dozens of undergraduate dissertations, so I think I know what a good thesis looks like.

Research areas

The overarching theme of my research is decentralisation of Internet services: that is, trying to move beyond the dominance of a few big tech companies, and towards models where users have better control over their own data. Concretely, I’m working on:

  • Local-first, a new model for collaboration software (think real-time collaboration in the style of Google Docs) that works without centralised cloud services. I co-created Automerge, which powers a growing number of production collaboration tools, and I coined the term “local-first”, which is increasingly becoming an industry trend with a conference, podcast, newsletter, etc.
  • Decentralised social media, by advising social network Bluesky and contributing to the development of the underlying AT Protocol.
  • Decentralised and privacy-preserving approaches to carbon emissions accounting and reporting, as well as tracking other sustainability issues such as deforestation across supply chains. See our Emission Impossible paper as an example.

My approach to research:

  • I connect theory with industrial practice. That is, I like to go all the way from a mathematical proof of an algorithm’s correctness to working with industrial collaborators to implement and deploy the algorithm in real-world systems.
  • I combine techniques from many areas of computer science: distributed systems, databases, formal verification, cryptography, and human-computer interaction.
  • I believe that doing good work requires a range of different perspectives. I therefore cultivate an inclusive environment, and collaborate with a diverse set of people, both inside and outside academia.
  • Encouragement and collaboration yield better results than pressure and competition.

As your supervisor, I will help you refine a project idea and provide guidance to make your project successful, but you’ll also have the freedom to choose your own path. I’ll try my best to answer your questions and unblock you if you’re stuck. I will help you get good at writing and presenting your ideas.

For students outside of Cambridge

Please note that I advise students at other universities only in very exceptional cases. Sorry, there just aren’t enough hours in the day.