I am interested in simulations (and even occasional calculations) with various sorts of matter on dynamical lattices, random surfaces and random graphs and have also made some small forays into nonequilibrium models such as the ASEP and ZRP. I survived coordinating an EC HCM network grant: "Analytical and Numerical Investigations of Random Geometries" (dec93 -dec96) and the Edinburgh and Borders Section of the Maths Challenge Competition for schools (july95-july98) with only marginal hair loss and was mad enough to take on coordinating another EC IHP network grant "Discrete Random Geometries: From Solid State Physics to Quantum Gravity" and an associated ESF network for the period 2000-2004 but I cunningly passed the role of network co-ordinator onto Renate Loll for the Framework 6 network ENRAGE (2005-2009). Being Head of Mathematics 2002-2006 resulted in some further hair loss but Dugald Duncan and now Jim Howie (time flies..) have made/are making a much better job of that and took the precaution of getting rid of their hair in advance.
One PhD student, Malmini Ranasinghe, finished in Oct 97 and the second, Michael Stathakopoulos, in Oct 2001. Przemek Repetowicz worked here as a postdoc funded by the EC network 2000-2002 before moving on to greater things in econophysics at TCD in Dublin. More recently I hosted Martin Weigel's personal Marie Curie fellowship (2005-2007) and Zoltan Kadar's Marie Curie fellowship (2005-2007) as part of the ENRAGE network. Martin is now in Mainz and Zoltan in Torino.
Other occasional visitors have included Brian Dolan (Maynooth) and Adam Lipowski (Poznan). Malmini has been back a few times since graduating to sample the fine Edinburgh weather again too.
My other interests include persecuting our four cats to persuade them to go away and attempting to understand the mysterious workings of PC Unix-alikes. Neither have been terribly successful to date.