Speaking
Keynotes and public engagement across five continents
Making the invisible underground compelling
I have delivered more than sixty international speeches across five continents - to engineers, executives, policymakers, and investors who need to understand what the ground can do for the challenges they are facing. Most recently at the World Economic Forum, Davos.
My talks combine three decades of frontier research with a direct argument: the underground is not background infrastructure. It is the climate transition's most consequential and least understood resource.
What I speak about
The Ground Beneath Our Cities
The most underused resource in the fight against climate change is right under our feet. A case for why cities need to look down, not just up.
Turning Buildings into Power Plants
Every foundation, every tunnel wall, every metro station can generate renewable heat and cooling. The technology exists. What's holding us back?
Burying Carbon for Good
Not capturing it. Not storing it. Permanently sequestering it at geological scale - the science, the confidence, and why this changes the climate calculus.
Engineering Certainty Over Millennia
How do you design something that must last longer than recorded human history? Deep geological disposal of nuclear waste and what it teaches us about long-term thinking.
The Future of Sustainable Infrastructure
The profession's responsibility to the climate challenge - and why geotechnical engineering is the missing piece of the net zero puzzle.
Nature as Engineer
Bacteria have been cementing the ground for billions of years. My lab learned how to harness that. The story of bio-cementation and what it means for construction's carbon footprint.
Selected lectures & appearances
