Staff Profile

Tess has worked in hydrogeology and related functions for over 20 years. She started her career with the regulator for groundwater and contaminated land in England (the Environment Agency) before moving to Australia to work for environmental consultancy and the government. After completing an MSc in Environmental Engineering at Newcastle University Tess went in a new direction as a technical lead for the provision of water and sanitation post-disaster. Her work took her around the world, with international NGOs and the UN, responding to everything from drought, to displacement and disease.



Tess completed a PhD focused on the use of citizen science for delineating variations in rainfall, particularly from convective events that can result in pluvial flooding. She enjoyed the challenge and is now one of two UK representatives for the EU COST action; OpenSense (https://opensenseaction.eu/) – facilitating international collaboration between researchers looking at opportunistic precipitation sensing networks. 

Tess contibutes to groundwater related teaching from the School of Engineering, comprising;

CEG8527: Fundamentals of Conceptual and Numerical Groundwater Modelling

CEG8525: Hydrosystems Processes and Data Analysis

CEG8107: Environmental Engineering in Low and Middle Income Countries

Tess previously lead groundwater modules;

CEG8511: Groundwater Assessment

CEG8516: Groundwater Modelling

CEG8507: Borehole Design, Construction and Operation

She is supervising MSc projects on nitrates in groundwater from the Fell Sandstone, the value of multi-level monitoring of groundwater, the development of Source Protection Zones on the East Yorkshire Chalk Aquifer and the use of field methods at the Newcastle University Borehole Array facility at Cockle Park Farm near Morpeth.