About Me

I am a Research Software Engineer at the British Antarctic Survey. My interest is in facilitating the best possible practice in research computing, from good training to advocating reproducible scientific software methods.

As of 2022 I am a Fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute, with a particular interest in developing training and guidance for reproducible methods in Matlab.

Background

My background is in animal vision research using methods from computing and physical sciences. Primarily, my research was in using numerical computational methods to explore the optics of three-dimensional visual anatomy. During my PhD at the University of Bristol I developed FDTD simulations for studying the optics of avian retinal photoreceptors. Following this I worked on ray tracing analyses of 3D ocelli and compound eye volumes of bumblebees and hoverflies with Stockholm and Lund University. More recently I spent 4 years as an RSE at the University of Sheffield’s RSE team.

However, I’ve had an eclectic career including (but not limited to): startling hermit crabs in behavioural experiments; training chickens to study their colour vision; diving for mantis shrimp to study their secret polarized signals; and doing R&D on TeraHertz electronics for space science.

Links

• Software Sustainability Institute
• Google Scholar
• RSE @ Sheffield
• My GitHub Profile
• Mastodon

Resources

• Research Software Methods Lecture for Undergrads - video
• Git & GitHub through GitKraken - Zero to Hero - course developed by @annakrystalli

Blogs

• Reproducible MATLAB Blog
  • A concise guide to reproducible MATLAB projects (also published on the Software Sustainability Institute and RSE Sheffield blogs)
  • Can MATLAB projects ever be reproducible?
  • Reproducible MATLAB: what do the people want?
• RSE Sheffield Blog
  • Demonstrating Importance and Value in Research Software
  • Software best practice: what can it do for me/my research?
  • Writing better and more shareable code
  • Handy tools for git(s)

Talks

• FAIR Research Software - Open Research Conversations x LunchBytes, University of Sheffield, 2023. [Slides, Repo, Video]
• Making MATLAB projects reproducible and shareable - OpenFest, University of Sheffield, 2022. [Slides, Repo, Video]
• Guest lecture for Computer Science Undergrads on RSE Methods, 2021-23. [Slides, Previous versions]