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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Flood Prepared / School of Engineering

    2021
    • Development of prototype mapping front end to flooding data for Newcastle

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Programming:
    • JavaScript
    • HTML/CSS
    • Python
    • Java
    • PHP
    • C/C++
    • Perl
    • Bash shell
  • Software:
    • Docker
    • PostgreSQL/PostGIS
    • Desktop GIS
    • Geospatial and Mapping Web Systems
    • OpenLayers
    • Geoserver
  • Topics:
    • Full-stack Web Development
    • UI/UX/visualisation
    • Web Design
    • AWS
    • DevOps
    • Docker

Interests

  • I enjoy:
    • Jazz piano
    • Music generally
    • Walking and the outdoors
    • Gardening
    • Food