Employment History

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Communicator and Skills Trainer

Self Employed 1982 – Present (31 years)

Programming

I have taught MATLAB, Java and a range of other programming languages at undergraduate level, and as part of post-graduate skills development courses. I am also an experience LaTeX user and tutor.

Public Engagement Skills.

I design and deliver interactive skills workshops that concentrate on developing skills and confidence for a wide range of people when interacting with the public, other audiences and the media.

Science Communicator

Award winning STEM ambassador; Featured researcher for the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement; Winner of `I'm a Scientist ... Get Me Out Of Here'; NESTA Famelab Finalist 2007

Regular appearances at science festivals, in schools, in the media (including twice on BBC Radio 4, The Science Museum and the Wellcome Trust), and at a wide variety of other public events.

Projects: 'Brainsex' (funded by a Wellcome Trust award) 'The Brain Game' (for the London Science Museum, the Cheltenham Science Festival and Cardiff Science Festival and featured in many schools), 'Supermarket Scientist' (for the Institute of Physics, British Science Week and schools workshops), 'The Brain Game'.

Programming

Research Fellow Plymouth University

August 2004 – August 2015

Independent and collaborative research into sensory systems, cognition and neuromorphic engineering.

Wider remit to increase the public, media, and academic profile of Plymouth University Cognition Institute. For details of publications click here.

Public Engagement Fellow at the Plymouth University Cognitive Institute

SCANDLE, EU FP7 project concering auditory scene analysis. Currently building computer models of how we learn to hear. The aim of this project is to help to design devices, ie machines, that learn to make sense of the world by experiencing it via artificial sensory systems. Along the way it is important that the work helps us to understands how auditory perception works in animals. Peer reviewed papers on recurrently connected networks of spiking neurons, auditory plasticity, and neuromorphic engineering.

COLAMN, "A Novel Computing Architecture for Cognitive Systems based on the Laminar Microcircuitry of the Neocortex". Aimed at developing computer models to understand better the laminar structure of the mammalian neocortex in order to design VLSI-integrated circuits that work in a brain-like way and can be used to build future computers. One year employed on this project. Posters and invited talks at major conferences.

EmCap (Emergent Cognition through Active Perception) is a research project in the field of Music Cognition funded by the European Commission (FP6-IST, contract 013123). It started in October 2005 and finished by September 2008. Peer reviewed papers on auditory perception and beat induction and pitch perception, posters and invited talks at international conferences.

ALAVLSI. Attend-to-learn and learn-to-attend with analolgue, neuromorphic VLSI.

Freelance tutor and lecturer University of Oxford

January 1995 – January 2005

Regular member of a team responsible for planning and delivering undergraduate computing science courses for the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education (Kellog College).

I continued my involvement in the development and teaching of the summer school component of courses between 2000 and 2005 while I was working full time at Plymouth. In addition to on-site teaching I have been involved in curriculum development for internet delivered courses as well as having an internet tutor group of my own.

IT Trainer Oxford CFE

January 1992 – January 2001

Developed and delivered a wide range of bespoke commercial courses for the Company Services division of Oxford College of FE. This involved close liaison with a number of local companies (such as Rover/BMW) to assess their commercial, strategic, and professional development needs.

Database Designer and Programmer Self Employed

Regular clients included Oxford and Nottingham Universities, Oxfam, and The British Heart Foundation. I have also helped engineering firms, NHS trusts, and city councils.