Following my passion to educate I began teaching web technologies to young people in Belfast’s CoderDojo. Although I created an introductory tutorial on getting started with HTML, CSS & Javascript, I encourage people to be creative and go off-script to build their own personalized web sites. They decide on the type of web site they want, then we sit together and make it happen.
Currently I am the lead developer and system architect of the CoupleWise relationship counseling solution. This is an e-learning platform that enables couples to work together to resolve their differences, with the ultimate goal of strengthening their relationships.
Prior to joining CoupleWise they had an ageing Rails 3 web site built around a MongoDB database. After careful evaluation I concluded that it would not be cost effective to upgrade their existing codebase and so redeveloped their entire platform from the ground up. This new platform utilizes HTML5 technologies enabling better experience by users on mobile devices. Full responsive design ensures the application is equally accessible on a small iPhone 4 as it is on a large desktop web browser.
Using PhoneGap this application will soon be available in the Apple and Android app stores.
Recently I have been working with KG Protech to design the architecture for their automated teaching platform. This will be an AWS cloud platform controlling a fleet of bespoke hardware devices using Internet of Things principles.
As a software consultant I have been assisting Xpand International with their technical strategy and have developed a prototype tool stack for their flagship product — Xpand Access.
These tools form the basis for Xpand’s data analytics platform and includes a Ruby on Rails API layer, a Rails front-end web site that integrates with the API layer and a suite of web page scrapers implemented in Ruby that feeds into the API layer. The API layer is built upon both PostgreSQL and MongoDB databases.
In the summer of 2007 I setup a small online shop to retail family-made bespoke semi-precious gemstone jewellery. By the following year this had fledged into a full-time business operating on several e-commerce platforms through a variety of brand names. To date I have sold over 100,000 unique handmade necklaces and bracelets.
Since 2007 I have been working periodically as a software consultant for Second Magenta, a company internationally renowned for its expertise in the design optimisation heated windshields used in aircraft and high speed trains.
I personally develop and support all of Second Magneta’s software tool stacks, which are mostly implemented in Java and Microsoft C#.
I won a funded 12-month scholarship placement on a prestigious entrepreneurship program [EPIS] to assess the technical and financial viability of a university PhD commercialisation opportunity.
Utilizing asynchronous chip design methodologies, this technology addressed significant security issues in the smart card industry by protecting the encryption on cards such as those you would typically use for ATM bank transactions.
Co-founder of Spiral Gateway, a venture capital backed fabless semiconductor chip vendor deploying ultra-low-power high-performance solutions for the Digital Signal Processing (DSP) market.
As the lead software developer I was responsible for the system architecture and development of the company’s Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tool suite.
Amalgamating the work of several PhD projects I built a prototype tool in Java and C++ that could reduce high-level digital logic design times by an order of magnitude. This tool incorporated Evolutionary Algorithms to dynamically generate digital circuits.
IP Shells was proof-of-concept project by The University of Edinburgh to develop a cloud platform,
back in the days before the cloud
was cool!
Here I designed, developed and patented a prototype J2EE solution allowing microchip manufacturers to design and test virtual digital circuits using the resources of a remote server farm. The server farm hosted both the CAD tool suites and the IP Verilog/VHDL code libraries necessary to build and test advanced DSP applications.
A bespoke Java Swing UI allowed SoC designers to drag and drop high-level circuit blocks and perform integration tests, but the source code remained securely protected on the server. This novel approach enabled vendors, such as mobile phone manufactures, to validate the functionality of the circuit modules, whilst protecting the source code of these modules until a purchasing decision was made.
This revolutionary EDA deployment solution won the backing of a SMART Award and a £500,000 grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
After graduating, I was offered a research position at IMNS in The University of Edinburgh. In this role I augmented an artificial intelligence (AI) application using heuristics and Genetic Algorithms to enhance automated testing of PCBs using C and Lisp. The resulting work was published in Proceedings Third NASA/DoD Workshop on Evolvable Hardware.
2005 – The University of Edinburgh – Thesis
2000 – The University of Edinburgh
1995 – Northern Regional College