What does a stable isotope consultant actually do?

An Atomic origin story….

Today is my birthday, I have just turned 45 and life is wide open and scary as hell. In the last year, I have quit a tenured faculty position, sold a dream home in Canada and moved back to Ireland with my family, in search of a new work-life balance. This time last year, none of this was planned, but I knew that I needed a change. I can still remember giving the closing address at IsoEcol 2024 with a sense that I had reached a peak in my academic career that I was unlikely to match. It was time for something new….

I had the very good fortune of starting sabbatical after that conference and used that time to reimagine what I wanted from life. I had spent two decades working hard to build my reputation as a researcher and then build a research group at UNB. Working around the world had allowed me to build skills as a communicator and mentor, finding my voice (to use a modern phrase) and grow in confidence. Academia gave me so much, opportunity to travel the world, and to meet and work with some of the brightest minds of my generation. Constantly challenging myself to do more and be better. I considered it a vocation rather than a career, but by fall 2024 I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. I had been burned out for years, and it was time to hand the reigns over to younger, fresher faces.

These two pictures will forever fill me with pride and make me smile. Hosting IsoEcol at UNB with this amazing group of people will forever stand out as a highlight of my academic career. This community, big and small, means so much to me, I’m looking forward to continuing working with you all, even if in a slightly different capacity.

Working at SINLAB, UNB and the Canadian Rivers Institute has been a great privilege in my life. I don’t know what I expected when we (myself, my pregnant wife and our toddler son) cleared immigration in Toronto Pearson Airport in April of 2014 but Canada certainly delivered. I am proud of the work I did there and exceptionally pleased with the young vibrant team I have left in my place. The new SINLAB crew, Mike, Emily, Alex and Brooke supported by others along with the Biology Department have the lab in a very strong place and ready to continue its story long after my chapter is complete. Exciting and challenging days ahead for this team!

But what next for me…. Well, my vocation continues I guess, spreading the good word about isotope science and helping folks better understand the ecosystems they work and live in. I have set up a business at home in Ireland, Atomic Ecology, through which I will operate as an independent researcher, trainer and stable isotope consultant. Which, eventually, brings us to the point of this post…. What does a stable isotope consultant actually do…. I consider myself an isotopically savvy gun for hire! Quicker than a grad student but cheaper than a post doc! I intend to fill this niche for as wide a variety of clients as I can find. The flexibility of stable isotope ecology is one of the things I love most about this field and I’m as excited to work with aquaculture, farmers and food producers as I am to work with ecological researchers. I am developing some online courses which will be delivered through this website and have plans for an isotope focussed online seminar series which will get going this winter. But I’m also ready to work and help folks with challenging datasets or research questions. This was a part of my old job that I loved and really engaged with. So, if you have a dataset, you can’t figure out, or a problem you can’t solve, drop me a line and we figure it out together.

This is an exciting time, scary as heck but exciting none the less. Life is for living, or so I have said many times in the past, so let’s gets busy!!