Modelling physical processes for a nuclear fusion start up.

Design, implementation and test of C++ embedded software for a satellite internet ground station.

I worked on metamaterial lenses for use in millimetre wave astronomy instrumentation, researching novel designs and modelling them.

The Diamond Light Source is a central facility that provides high intensity X ray beams for use by the science and engineering research communities, both academic and industrial. My role consisted of both supervisory and technical parts.I was the leader of the Diffraction and Scattering controls and data acquisition team consisting of seven engineers providing controls and data acquisition software support to a loosely related group of nine X ray beam lines. This required prioritising beam line tasks for the team in coordination with the beam line scientific staff. I was also the line manager of the three control systems software engineers in the team.In addition I directly provided control system software support for two of the beam lines. This involved the integration of equipment into the control systems of new and existing beam lines as well as the ongoing support of operating beam lines. During this time, I developed EPICS drivers for camera sensors, motor controllers and other devices. The ability to smoothly perform tomography has recently been a focus of a cross discipline group and I have contributed effort at the EPICS control system level. As a result, I have gained an understanding of the principles behind tomographic reconstruction and the requirements such a system places on the infrastructure.I was also part of a group that developed the ‘Excalibur’ camera system. This was a photon counting detector based around an 8x6 array of the CERN Medipix3 device that can capture 2048x1536 pixel images at up to 100 frames per second continuously or 1000 frames per second in burst mode. The multi-disciplinary group contained members from Diamond Light Source and other STFC departments on the RAL site.

For much of my time at Airspan, a manufacturer of radio based telecommunications equipment, I was manager and architectural lead for the embedded software team. The team size was usually around 8, but at times there were as many as 20 engineers reporting to me.The products for which software was developed ranged from wireless local loop telephony systems to (in the later years) 802.16 WiMax data networking equipment. Software was designed using OO methods, written in C and C++ and was was produced alongside extensive automatic test suites. In the last few years, these were run by a primitive continuous integration system.

This tenured University post in the Computer Science Department consisted of R&D, teaching and technical support duties.My main role was as a member of an inter-departmental satellite instrumentation group. This group studied plasma wave physics in the magnetosphere. To collect data, the group designed satellite instrumentation for both the ESA and Russian space programmes. My R&D for this group was in the field of instrumentation techniques, both software and hardware. My primary interests were in parallel processing, fault tolerance and design methodologies but I also led the implementation teams. There were five of these instrumentation projects during my tenure. I was involved throughout all stages, initial concept, proposal writing, planning, managing, designing, building, testing, integrating and operating. These projects were run to tight budgets and strict time scales.The two larger instruments were based on small arrays of transputers (a microprocessor specifically designed to operate in multi-processor arrays by a company called Inmos). These were arranged in a fault tolerant fashion, with software designed to continue operating, in a degraded mode, even with the loss of one or more processors. This software was written in Occam, a language based around the ideas of communicating sequential processes. These instruments were supported during the development phase by a large simulation system based around Xilinx FPGAs and a PC running software written using Visual C++ and MFC.During this period I also worked with the parallel processing and software methodologies research groups and gave a number of lecture courses in digital hardware design, Modula II and Pascal programming. My technical support duties were the management of the hardware development team that implemented small projects, as required, for various research groups and lecture courses.

I was a member of a Physics Department research team designing and building the plasma wave spectrometer instrument for the NASA AMPTE scientific satellite mission, launched in 1994. My responsibilities were the design and development of the on-board microprocessor control system and the ground support equipment for the instrument.