| Last updated: Feb 5 2010, 23:13:43 |
| Career history | ||
|---|---|---|
| Dates | Position | Company |
| 2005- | Senior/Principal Software Engineer | QC Solutions, 22 Linnell Circle, Suite 101, Billerica MA 01812, United States of America. |
| 1998-2005 | Senior Software Engineer | FEI/Micrion Corporation, 1 Corporation Way, Peabody MA 01960, United States of America. |
| 1998 (Contract) | Software Tester | Lernout & Hauspie, 52 Third Avenue, Burlington MA 01803, United States of America. |
| 1997-1998 | Senior Software Engineer | Eaton Corporation, Semiconductor Equipment Operations, 108 Cherry Hill Drive, Beverly MA 01915, United States of America. |
| 1990-1996 | Software Engineer | Tessella Support Services plc, 3 Vineyard Chambers, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 3TL, United Kingdom. |
| 1983-1990 | Research Assistant | City University, School of Engineering, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, United Kingdom. |
1998-2005: Senior Software Engineer, FEI Company
Since 1998 I have been employed as a software engineer by FEI Company (formerly Micrion Corporation), responsible for maintaining code for the mask repair system.
Most semiconductor manufacturers use masks in their production process, and these define where tracks and components will go on the eventual microchip. If there are defects in the mask, then the defects will be reproduced on all the microchips, causing wasted production if the microchips do not work as specified. FEI's focussed ion beam systems can be used to examine the mask in much the same way as an electron microscope, and then deposit or etch away material to repair the mask. This is much quicker to do than remaking the mask.
1998 (Contract): Software Tester, Lernout & Hauspie
For a few weeks I was employed as a temporary software tester by Lernout & Hauspie, makers of Voice Express. They needed software testers with British accents to help with development of their British English version of the product. My tasks were to run a series of pre-determined test scripts, exercising the product in areas that were deficient, and documenting the results of the tests I performed.
1997-1998: Senior Software Engineer, Eaton Corporation
From 1997 to 1998, I was employed by Eaton Corporation, Semiconductor Equipment Operations division, as a senior software engineer. I worked in the factory automation section, where I was responsible for program codes that deal with host to equipment communication.
Most customers want to be able to interface their existing company computers to Eaton's equipment, and we provided this facility. A proprietary protocol for exchanging messages has been developed by a SEMI, or "Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International", a semiconductor industry consortium. The protocol is called SECS, or "SEMI Equipment Communications Standard", and allows equipment from many manufacturers to exchange messages and data. Because there are a large number of SECS messages, a subset of the SECS standard has been defined. This is called GEM, or the "Generic Equipment Model". We tested host to equipment communication by using a PC that runs SecSim Pro, a SECS simulator package by GW Associates. This package allows us to test that SECS messages are being exchanged correctly, and also allows us to test for basic GEM compliance via test scripts.
I added enhancements and bug fixes to existing code for Eaton's systems. The code is all written in C, and runs on both Sun Sparcs and Motorola embedded systems running VxWorks.
1990-1996: Software Engineer, Tessella Support Services plc
Between 1990 and 1996, I was employed by Tessella Support Services, based in Abingdon, near Oxford. I reached the position of software engineer, beginning my employment with Tessella as a senior applications programmer. An ISO 9000 registered technical computing consultancy company, Tessella supports the local scientific and technical community. I have worked for two clients, and I was last working on a long-term contract at JET, Europe's main nuclear fusion research establishment.
At JET, my responsibilities were to design and develop software for the control, data acquisition and analysis of results for one of JET's many diagnostic subsystems, given brief operational specifications by the physicists who want to operate the software.
To this end, I wrote X-window-based graphical user interface software that the physicists can use to set up their diagnostic equipment easily. The software was written in C and UIL (user interface language) to run under the Motif window manager, running on a Sun/Unix platform.
Part of the diagnostic's control system is VME-based, and so I developed control programs that run on the Sun X-window system to interface to programs running on the VME systems, by communicating across a TCP/IP ethernet network. The network communications software is of client/server construction, based on the BSD socket model. The server software running on the VME systems was written in C, using the VxWorks development system.
One major task of the VME system is to drive several motors, and I wrote function libraries and include files to simplify the motor control facilities and also the network communications.
I was system manager for two Hewlett-Packard Unix workstations that run a bespoke package from Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory in the USA. This controls high-power industrial equipment, and large power supplies on my diagnostic. I also provided general system support for the users of these systems.
I was also responsible for developing and maintaining internal world-wide-web pages that provide information about my diagnostic system and its progress to the whole of JET. This involved writing HTML documentation, and providing all the necessary embedded hypertext links and graphics. I maintain my own personal web pages, and also those of my wife.
Prior to working on this diagnostic system, I was involved in porting analysis and data acquisition and control programs from old Norsk Data mini computers to JET's (then) new Sun computers. These programs were originally written in Norsk Data's proprietary dialect of Fortran 66, and converted to Sun's ANSI standard Fortran 77. I also supported and enhanced a suite of data analysis programs on JET's IBM mainframe. I was responsible for making modifications to the code as requested by the physicists who ran the programs. I added ISPF panels to the programs to make the user input more robust, and to provide a consistent look and feel to all the programs in the suite. These programs were all written in Fortran 77.
Before I went to JET, I worked on two projects for the Bank of England printing works.
I was a member of Tessella's in-house team developing a computer aided bank-note design system for the Bank of England. This software is being used for the latest release of banknotes. Tessella has been involved in this project for a number of years, in ongoing support and development contracts. I was involved in the analysis, design and coding of the Bank's requirements, and some occasional telephone support. The software was mostly written in Fortran 77 on a MicroVAX, running VMS.
In another project for the Bank of England, I wrote a backup tape manager. This is a program that runs automatically every time the MicroVAX boots, and it prompts the operator to insert a specific backup tape. This was designed for non-technical operators, and had to be robust and explicit in its instructions. I was solely responsible for designing and coding the program given the specifications. This program was written entirely using VMS DCL scripts.
1983-1990: Research Assistant, City University
Between 1983 and 1990 I was employed as a research assistant, at The City University, in London.
I was a member of the School of Engineering, carrying out research into ultrasonic transducer design in the field of non-destructive testing. I developed and extended computer models to simulate the behaviour of new types of transducers, and my predictions were compared with results obtained from prototype transducers made by my colleagues. There were several computer models, all written in Fortran 77 and running under a Unix platform, and I created subroutine libraries to keep commonly-used functions in one place. This work was written up as my PhD thesis.
| Mainframe computers | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| System | Operating system | Application/Language | Years |
| IBM 3090 | MVS | Fortran 77 | 1991-1996 |
| Honeywell 66/6000 | GCOS | Fortran 66 | 1983-1987 |
| GINO graphics library | 1983-1987 | ||
| Harris 125, 500 | Vulcan | Pascal | 1981-1983 |
| Fortran | 1981-1983 | ||
| DECsystem 20 | Tops 20 | Basic | 1980-1981 |
| Mini computers | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| System | Operating system | Application/Language | Years |
| DEC MicroVax 3100 | VMS | Fortran 77 | 1990-1991 |
| Gould PN9005, PN6040 | UNIX | Fortran 77 | 1986-1990 |
| GINO graphics library | 1986-1990 | ||
| DEC PDP-11 | RT-11 | Fortran IV | 1985 |
| Prime 550 | Primos | Fortran 77 | 1985 |
| Workstations | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| System | Operating system | Application/Language | Years |
| IBM PowerPC | Unix (AIX) | C | 1998-present |
| X-windows/Motif | 1998-present | ||
| ClearCase version control | 1998-present | ||
| SUN Sparcstation | UNIX (Sun OS) | C | 1993-present |
| X-windows/Motif | 1991-present | ||
| ClearCase version control | 1997-present | ||
| Fortran 77 | 1991-1996 | ||
| Hewlett Packard 9000/400 | UNIX (HP-UX) | Diagnostic control package | 1991-1996 |
| Whitechapel MG1 | UNIX | Fortran 77 | 1987-1990 |
| X-windows | 1987-1990 | ||
| Finite element package | 1990 | ||
| Personal computers | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| System | Operating system | Application/Language | Years |
| IBM PCs | Linux | System admin | 1997-present |
| MS Windows | Word | 1991-present | |
| Excel | 1991-present | ||
| Powerpoint | 1995-present (occasional) | ||
| Corel Draw | 1994-present (occasional) | ||
| Mosaic | 1995-1995 | ||
| Netscape | 1995-present | ||
| Visual Basic | 1996-present (occasional) | ||
| Visual C++ | 1996-present (occasional) | ||
| MS-DOS | Wordstar | 1987-1991 | |
| Turbo Pascal | 1987-1990 | ||
| IBM Fortran 77 | 1987-1990 | ||
| GW Basic | 1987-1990 | ||
| Ventura | 1988-1991 | ||
| Lotus 123 | 1988-1991 | ||
| dBase 3 | 1988-1993 | ||
| GEM | 1988-1990 | ||
| IBM PS/2 | AIX | X-windows | 1990-1991 |
| C/WP Cortex | C/PM | Wordstar | 1986-1988 |
| Microsoft Basic | 1986-1988 | ||
| Turbo Pascal | 1986-1988 | ||
| Industrial control | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| System type | Operating system/Language | Application | Years |
| PLC | Siemens Step 5 | Control system | 1992-1996 |
| VME | Unix/VxWorks/C | Control system | 1993-1998 |
Doctorate degree, 1990: Ph.D. (Physics): "Computer modelling of high resolution ultrasonic transducers".
The diffraction effects are explained in terms of a model which sees a circular transducer as a piston source radiating a direct plane wave in the geometric region straight ahead of the source together with diffracted toroidal wave from the edge of the source.
An impulse response method is used to make calculations of the echo waveforms reflected from point targets. The forms of the echo response are used to demonstrate the effects of diffraction in the overall resolution of the transducer. The impulse response method is extended so that the echo response from any arbitrary finite-sized circular target including non-planar can be modelled.
New high-resolution transducers are designed to overcome some of the limitations due to the diffraction effects by radiating either solely plane waves or solely edge waves in a non-uniform manner across the transducer's surface The results show that such non-uniformly excited transducers have both improved resolution and simpler field structures than conventional transducers.
Chelsea College merged with Kings College in about 1985. The physics and electronics departments are now at:
King's College London,
Strand,
London WC2R 2LS.
Bachelor degree, 1983: B.Sc. Second (upper) Class Honours. Main subjects: Electronics and Physics. Direct entry into second year, on the strength of the HND.
Subjects taken:
Kingston Polytechnic achieved university status and was renamed Kingston University, in about 1990.
Higher National Diploma, 1981: Applied Physics (with 2 distinctions).
Subjects taken:
GCE "A" Levels, 1979:
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