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What’s your professional background and how did you first become interested in this field?
Computer science was the most logical thing for me to study. When I was in primary school my parents had a computer at home and I loved setting it up, installing software, and fixing anything that wasn’t working. In after school classes I enjoyed robotics and learning about binary numbers. My interest in computer science continued through secondary school to post-graduate level at university, where I was introduced to medical imaging, machine learning and neural networks. My Master of Sciences (MSc) in computer graphics, vision and imaging was full of enticing tasks with an array of new things to try.
Read more...What's your professional background and how did you come to work at Diamond?
I read Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, then remained in Cambridge to complete a PhD in Experimental Particle Physics. I was a member of the ATLAS Collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider, searching for Supersymmetry, a favoured theory explaining physics beyond the Standard Model. Following my PhD, I was elected to a Research Fellowship at Pembroke College and continued to search for new physics. I was very fortunate: the successful start-up of the LHC coincided with the start of the second year of my PhD, and I was able to be physically based at CERN for it. My tenure in ATLAS also coincided with the discovery of the Higgs!
Tempted to try something different, I left Cambridge to join the Williams Formula One team in Oxfordshire, joining the Aerodynamics department to develop software for the processing, analysis and visualisation of data, providing data presentation via user interfaces to support wind tunnel and track operations.
After four years at Williams, the opportunity arose to reconnect with science by coming to work at Diamond. I joined the Beamline Controls group as Team Leader of one of the four support teams, a role I’ve carried out for the last four years.
Read more...Diamond Light Source is the UK's national synchrotron science facility, located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
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