about
David is a Research Software Engineer in the Digital Institute. The team focuses on delivering software engineering expertise for research projects across the university. He graduated with a MA in Natural Sciences (Physics) from Cambridge University in 1986, followed by a long career in the software industry, including 10 years working as a freelance Web Developer. Before joining the Newcastle RSE team in 2019, David worked for 12 years for British Antarctic Survey, completing large Full-Stack geospatial web development projects in Antarctica and Tasmania.
Since joining the RSE team in April 2019, he designed and implemented principally mapping/geospatial web applications for a number of research projects.
PROJECTS
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Medical Document Readability / South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Trust
2022- Create a web-based tool to analyse medical documents intended for the public for readability
- Eventually intention to package as an Office 365 extension
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Urban Development Model front end / School of Engineering, Newcastle and Gateshead Councils
2022- Map-based Decision Support Tool for Urban Development Modelling
- Allows specification of attractors and constraints
- Produces visualisations of UDM outputs to aid planning decisions
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Hinterlands / Urban Observatory, Northumberland Hepple Estate
2021- Building map-based visualisation of real-time positions of sensor-equipped animals on Hepple Estate
- Enabling temporal navigation of data, plus download of positional data within time boundaries
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Flood Prepared / School of Engineering
2021- Development of prototype mapping front end to flooding data for Newcastle
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UK Household Occupancy dataset / School of Engineering + University of Leeds
2020-2022- Building a synthetic household/building occupancy dataset for UK from OS MasterMap and 2011 Census data
- Data cross-checking for NISMOD-DB++ database
- Contribution to a wider paper on Urban Development Modelling and Digital Twins
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Geospatial Engineering Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) / School of Engineering
2019-2022- Software engineering support for MRes cohorts both at Newcastle and Nottingham
- Mentoring of students
- Hardware and software requirements specifications for CDT students
- Liaison with module leaders
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Mistral / School of Engineering
2019-2021- Creation of Web tools to visually interrogate the NISMOD-DB++ UK Infrastructure database
- Development of synthetic UK household/building dataset from MasterMap and Census data
- Creation of dashboard front end to the Flood Prepared risk analysis modelling
- IoT-based visualisation of wildlife and visitor movements within Northumbria National Park
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Spatial Inequality and the Smart City / School of Geography
2019-2021- Visualisation of complex demographic geospatial data
- Modelling of sensor distributions within a Smart City context
- Working closely with Newcastle Urban Observatory
- Liaison with other researchers at Turing Institute
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Antarctic Coastline Mapping (Student project) /
2020-2021- Specification of a Data Science project to automate digitisation of Antarctic ice coastline
- detailed liaison with former colleagues to frame project requirements
- supervision of student through 3-month project and write-up
- putting together a phase 2 of the project for a 2021 student to start in June
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Software Carpentries / Software Carpentries
2020-2021- Qualifying as a Carpentries instructor
- Delivering regular modules in Python, Git, Shell etc to students
- Developing new modules, especially in Geospatial Systems
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Geospatial Systems Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) / School of Engineering
2019-2021- Specifying and procuring suitable computing resources for students
- Supporting and mentoring students in Software Engineering
- Liaison with CDT lecturers to ensure student systems have all required software for taught modules
- Involvement with multi-partner global Waterhub project, creating a geospatial data sharing platform
education
MA Natural Sciences (Physics) / Cambridge University
1983-1986
technical
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Programming:
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Software:
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Topics:
Interests
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I enjoy: