As an undergraduate I studied Chemistry at the University of Sheffield before completing my PhD in Astrochemistry at The University of Nottingham in 2006. I then worked as a senior developer at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge before joining the Galaxy Zoo team in Oxford. Over the past 3 years I have been responsible for leading the development of a platform for citizen science called 'Zooniverse'. In August of this year I took up the position of Director of Citizen Science at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago where I continue to lead the software and infrastructure development for the Zooniverse.