James has around 30 years' experience in weather and climate dynamics research, starting with weather prediction research at the Meteorological Service in the early 1980s. He is a principal scientist in the NIWA climate group and is a lead researchers on climate variability and change. His current interests include large-scale Southern Hemisphere climate variability (such as the El Niño/La Niña cycle and the mid-latitude westerly circulation) and the impacts of large-scale climate variability and change on the New Zealand environment.

Graig is a physical oceanographer with a focus on environmental fluid mechanics.HeI mainly use observational techniques, which takes him to a variety of locations with a range of collaborators. The work is mainly about turbulence, stratification and waves, and how entities react/behave/exist in such fluid environments. From the energy perspective, he leads a programme looking at how to optimally locate tidal turbines so that they extract energy effectively whilst not generating conditions that could lead to environmental degradation.