Born in England in 1969, Hutchinson completed a BSc at the University of Exeter, UK, and received a PhD degree there in 1994 in the area of theoretical physics.

[4] Hutchinson is currently chair of the board at Otago Museum,[5] and was a departmental science advisor for New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment from 2021 - 2024.

In 2018 Hutchinson was visiting fellow at Merton College at the University of Oxford, an opportunity given to just a handful of educators around the world per year.

In 2017 he was one of a team of science educators, including Ian Griffin, who visited the Chatham Islands to work with school pupils.

[15] He also attended the New Zealand LUMA Light Festival in 2018 in a similar capacity, with more than 2,000 people struck by the Lab in a Box attraction.

[3] Specifically, he examines the effects of disorder in Bose–Einstein condensates (systems first created in 1995, and at University of Otago since 1998, which form at close to absolute zero).

[6] He has also worked on understanding energy transport on the FMO complex found in deep-sea bacteria which rely on infrared photons, and its possible implications for producing more efficient solar photovoltaic panels.