Fellow Detail

My research interests lie in the area of scientific computing. I am implementing massively parallel solvers together with the Met Office, lead the development of a performance-portable molecular dynamics framework and work on novel multilevel Monte Carlo algorithms. I pass on my knowledge to students by teaching parallel computing and modern software development techniques.

I became hooked on writing research software during my PhD in computational particle physics (Lattice QCD) at the University of Edinburgh. Since then I contributed to a range of software-driven interdisciplinary research projects.

After my PhD I spent two years at the Met Office, where I was responsible for the parallelisation and optimisation of the NAME atmospheric dispersion model; this code was used to predict the spread of ash clouds from the Eyjafjallajokull eruption in 2010. I then moved to the University of Bath as a PostDoc to develop massively parallel multigrid solvers for atmospheric forecast models and I currently work with RSEs at the Met Office to integrate those algorithms into the next generation model code. As a Lecturer in the Department of Mathematical Sciences in Bath I advocate good practices in software development in my teaching and when working with postgraduate students. I introduce final year students to parallel programming in a course on Scientific Computing which I taught in the last years. For my research I collaborate with computational chemists on the development of a performance-portable framework for molecular dynamics and continue to work with the Met Office on the development of new multilevel Monte Carlo methods for atmospheric dispersion modelling.

I look forward to engage with the RSE community through the Software Sustainability Institute. As an Fellow I want to build on training in using revision control which I already deliver to our now PhD students and become more involved in Software-Carpentry-style tutorials on a wider scale. I plan to bring together other scientists and RSEs to organise an workshop on debugging numerical codes - an area which is important but often not explored systematically. Here I am particularly keen to build on growing momentum in the GW4 community of unversities in the Southwest which recently delivered the world's first ARM based supercomputer, Isambard.