Chris is a physical oceanographer and climate scientists within the CSIRO's Oceans and Atmosphere buisness unit. He completed his PhD in 2014, studying geophysical fluid dynamics in a joint program between the Australian National University, CSIRO and Laboratoire d’Etudes en Geophysique et Oceanographie Spatiales (LEGOS), Toulouse. After his PhD, he worked as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Sorbonne Universities in Paris. 

His work concerns the role of the ocean within the climate system, particularly how the East Australian Current and the tropical Indian and Pacfic oceans exert an influence over the climate of the Australian region. He is also particularly interested in the influence of ocean dynamics on marine ecosystems, extreme events such as marine heatwaves, and adapting modern data-science techniques to cimate science.