curriculum vitae (cv / resume)

Senior Software Engineer : doing essentially the same job I was doing at Symbian in a team with Series 40 and Maemo too.

Senior Software Engineer : I started in Core Tools as Technical Lead of a new (Linux and Windows) build system for the entire Symbian OS. The project grew and grew as more requirements were added - but it was delivered. It built version 9.4 of the OS in 5 minutes on a Linux cluster and saved many teams over an hour on their Windows test builds.

Symbian was a really friendly company: even though it grew quite big, you could still find yourself sitting next to one of the directors at lunch, even the CEO! The company was bought outright by Nokia in 2009.

Principal Software Engineer : I was a software architect and team leader in charge of "Rendering and JDF". My team played a key part in the creation of FujiFilm's "next generation workflow" product - one of the first to use the Adobe PDF Print Engine (or "Monza" as it was called during development).

It was fun to learn about the dots in the printing world and there were many challenges to overcome... not least the Buncefield Oil Depot explosion which completely destroyed our building (good job it happened on a Sunday morning!)

In the end though, life's too short to spend so much of it on the M25.

Technical Director : I was one of the founders of PepperDog, a software company specialising in image matching, face detection and object tracking. We did a lot of promising work with Computer Associates on door-logging (recording time-stamped images of people passing through) and had a lot of interest in our ideas about "biometrics" until people stopped listening and started talking "Big Brother Applications".

I won a gold medal from Canon in 2002 for inventing things. Ideas just pop into my head all the time, as if by magic, so Canon was a great company to work for because they encouraged that sort of thing.

2000 - 2004 Senior Researcher Visual Communication Group : I researched tools for enabling effective collaboration across networks. This involved training neural networks (using image sequences and 3D head models) to perform face detection, gaze tracking and face recognition. In addition I led projects to develop automatic face annotation for photograph albums and to investigate the application of visual learning algorithms to handwriting recognition.

1995 - 2000 Researcher Computer Vision Group : I helped research and develop tools for extracting 3D information from digital images and video. Initially this involved large-scale photogrammetry, camera calibration and stereo matching, for arbitrary objects. Eventually the project focussed on "small" objects and was finally developed into a commercial software product 3D.SOM. During this time I also developed software to fine-tune the stereo rectification of a 3D camera adapter being built by a colleague in Japan: and I produced a system for the production of time-lapse sequences using a hand-held camera.

Canon also, rather generously, provided Japanese language lessons during my time there. I improved slowly for about 3 years and then plateaued, having little opportunity to practice with native speakers: I can now only communicate with Japanese people if they just want to say "hello" or buy shoes.

Research Officer 1A Mathematical Sciences and Mechanical Engineering : "Design by Virtual Manufacturing" a 4-person project to investigate how desktop Virtual Reality techniques can be used to assist the computer-aided design and manufacture of engineering components. The project generated a lot of interest from academia and industry, and we were invited to demonstrate our system at The Royal Society New Frontiers In Science Exhibition in June 1995.

1989 - 1992 Ph.D (Computer Vision) Electronics and Computer Science : "Colour Object Recognition Using Shape-based Aspects" the research investigated the application of a shape descriptor based on fractal geometry and perceptually meaningful colour metrics to image understanding. Objects were modelled as lists of unique two-dimensional views, or Aspects, described in terms of the derived shape and colour descriptors.

1986 - 1989 B.Eng (Hons. First Class) Electronic Engineering : Final Year Options: Computer Systems Architecture, Digital System Design, Information Theory and Signal Processing, Integrated Circuit Design, Intelligent Knowledge-based Systems, Software Engineering. Final Year Project: "Model-based Visual Inspection" automatic visual inspection of thick-film hybrid circuits by comparing lines detected in images to lines in the original CAD models.

Student Engineer : 3 months of basic engineering training and 6 months of project work at SETC Bromley. Followed by industrial attachments at DGDQA Woolwich (engineering drawing practises) and RAE Farnborough (developed a remote controller for a speech-recogniser and data-storage device). The MoD also sponsored my first degree.

Prizes : Computing(1983), Maths(1985).

A Levels : Maths(A), Physics(A), Chemistry(B), Further Maths(C).

AO Levels : Additional Maths(A), General Studies(B).

O Levels : Biology (A), Chemistry (A), Computer Studies (A), English Language(A), English Literature (A), Geography (A), Maths (A), Physics (A), French (B).

I wanted to be Spiderman or Mr Spock.