About me
I am a Research Software Engineer at the Institute of Cancer Research, doing a PhD in ultra-high resolution crystallographic protein structures at Birkbeck College (UoL) in my spare time.
Having been a programmer in banking for many years, and then a secondary school maths teacher, I discovered the academic world a bit too late. It was prompted by becoming the primary carer for my daughter with type 1 diabetes and googling related programming jobs - thus finding Bioinformatics. With no Biology at all, I launched into an MSc in Bioinformatics at Birkbeck College, and then, needing proper money, started a PhD in my spare time and a full time job.
My PhD work is for the sheer fun of it, so is progressing slowly and is a bit tangential. My interests are in mathematical methods and analysis of spatial data; the meaning of experimental evidence and the evidence for protein geoemetry; and the extent to which information is meaningful. Having invented an interpolation algorithm when I was a teenager I can't resist using it even though there are better ones.