Alan graduated from Elanora High School in 2009, where his favourite subjects were Music and Physics. Despite being eligible and having mostly good grades, he made the unconventional decision not to sit for the OP exam (now ATAR). His reasoning was simple: 12 years of schooling was enough, and he had no desire to go to university.

After graduating, Alan worked various labouring jobs while trying to secure a trade apprenticeship. In mid-2010, he successfully started his carpentry apprenticeship and after completing it in 2015, became a qualified carpenter. However, after working in the trade for a couple of years, Alan found himself increasingly drawn to questions about human behaviour and what was really going on inside our brains.

Through friends studying psychology at university, Alan became fascinated by the subject. As a keen science enthusiast with a growing interest in human behaviour, he realised psychology would be a perfect fit. So at age 24, he made another life-changing decision: he quit his carpentry career and enrolled as a mature age student at Griffith University to undertake a Bachelor of Psychology.

Alan's academic transformation was remarkable. He received academic achievement awards each year of his undergraduate degree for high grades, then completed his honours course with a First Class outcome. His research project examined how eye-movements and our awareness of them change as we learn novel tasks. Using a flight simulator, his research revealed that as people gain expertise, their awareness of what they're doing decreases as cognitive processes become more automatic.

This success led to a scholarship for his PhD, also at Griffith University. His doctoral research focuses on how alcohol affects driving through a visual-cognitive lens, and whether making people aware of alcohol-related impairments (even when below the legal BAC limit) influences their intention to drink-drive. He expects to submit his thesis towards the end of this year.