I am an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow and Director of the optical dating laboratory at the University of Wollongong in Australia. My background and training is in Archaeology and the Earth Sciences. I am interested in the further development and refinement of optical dating of single grains of sand and its application to sand grains buried at geological and archaeological sites around the world. My ongoing aim is to create a finely-resolved timeline for key turning points in human evolution and Earth history. I use optical dating to create high-resolution chronologies to reveal new clues about the early history of Homo sapiens, their dispersal from Africa, and interactions with other hominin groups that crossed their path. I am also interested in past human-environment interactions and the ecological footprint of first humans reaching new continents.