Simon » Work

Santa Fe

Simon — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:22:25 +0000

When writing about the Wokingham Half Marathon I mentioned that I had arrived back in the UK, from Santa Fe, shortly before the race, but I failed to mention why I had been away.

At the beginning of February I started a new job, in the Evolutionary Biology Group, which is in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Reading. The project I am researching is concerned with the evolution of phoneme use across sets of related languages. This research is in conjunction with researchers at the Santa Fe Institute and to learn more about the project I spent two weeks visiting them.

It was a good trip and I also had opportunity to spend time exploring the local area. While there I did some running – all of which was either up or down hill and at an altitude of over 2000m.

My Job

Simon — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 11:11:09 +0000

I rarely mention my work here, but decided to change that and show a recently produced image.

I am currently working on modelling wind flow and dispersion in urban areas. This research is for the Boundary Layer Meteorology group, which is in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading.

The image in this post is from a recent experiment, modelling scalar transport.

(And thanks to the hard work of those that allows me to produce such images!)

Graduation

Simon — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:47:13 +0000

This morning I graduated. I am really glad that the hotter weather of earlier in the week had relented, making the wearing of a suit and robes much more bearable.

The combination of a surname starting with a letter early in the alphabet and my degree meant that I was the first person to be presented for a degree today. There was a small amount of pressure to start the proceedings off correctly.

Presentation Styles

Simon — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:19:28 +0000

Today I presented at the Reading e-Research Open Meeting. My presentation is on that website, but that set of slides is my notes rather than the presentation slides I displayed. My usual presentation style is to use many slides. Instead, for this fifteen minute presentation I decided to try a different style and I went minimalist. In the presentation I showed two slides [1] – two and ten from the longer presentation – and drew similar images to those on slide three [2].

I found this to work fairly well. Certainly it stopped me from just reading the slides and just stand and talk about my research. I could have used some better flash cards/notes – just to have some reminder of areas I wanted to mention. I certainly feel this needs experimenting with and more trails. And that is good – I am giving a seminar [3] next week!

Notes
[1] I used no title slide either – everyone in the meeting had a schedule with my name on it and I had just been introduced.
[2] The images on slide three are not those drawn in the meeting. Instead, they are images I drew especially to put in the longer version of the slides.
[3] For the research group weekly meeting.

Number 36!

Simon — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:07:40 +0000

The latest Top 500 list came out today. Our new machine is number 36. It is the largest UK academic machine and one of four systems in Berkshire in the top fifty. I’ll post some pictures of it when I manage to get them off my colleagues.

Reading

Simon — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:20:09 +0000

Today is my last day of conferencing for a while. For the last six weeks I have either been attending a conference, travelling to a conference, or organising a conference. Tomorrow is a rest day and then it is back to writing the thesis.

Yesterday I presented Sparse Hybrid Monte Carlo Methods for Matrix Inversion. The presentation went fairly well and I was asked some interesting questions prompting a good discussion. It would have been useful to have some graphs of the results, but the results were produced too late for this.

Bulgaria

Simon — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:37:10 +0000

I am back from Bulgaria and trying to catch up with all that has been going on while I have been away. In Bulgaria I attended the 6th International Conference on “Large-Scale Scientific Computations”. The conference was in Sozopol, which is on the Black Sea coast – my room was onto the sea. Then we were in Sofia for a couple of days, which coincided with the US President being in town – meaning that there were police everywhere.

Now I am back I am busy putting together the final touches for The Sixth IMACS Seminar on Monte Carlo Methods (MCM2007). I must remember to write my presentation in the next few days!

China

Simon — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 21:20:17 +0000

For the past week I have been near Beijing, China. The primary purpose of the trip was to attend the International Conference on Computational Science 2007 (ICCS 2007). At the conference I presented, on behalf of Professor Ivan Dimov and Rayna Georgieva, Complexity of Monte Carlo Algorithms for a Class of Integral Equations. This is not in my direct area of research, but in a reasonably closely related area.

Also while out in China we visited the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Great Wall, some of the Ming Tombs, and some other areas in and around Beijing. The hotel we were staying at was a spa resort, so we were able to relax in the spa pools and get a massage. All in all a fairly good trip, even if the smog did get a bit much by the end.

Tomorrow I am off to Bulgaria!

Teaching, again

Simon — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 10:54:57 +0000

This week is another where I am teaching. This time I am just teaching the practicals, so I am only busy in the afternoons and not all day as last time. Though, at the moment, I have not done that much. There are only two students for this module. On Monday the students were busy finishing off the coursework for another module and on Tuesday the lecturer decided to use the afternoon for extra lecture time.

Teaching again has reminded me that I am meant to be going through the lecture notes for this module and suggesting edits. Also I must have to write an exam for the earlier module. Tomorrow will be a good time for both of these, I feel.

Teaching…

Simon — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 09:35:58 +0000

My research group runs two MSc courses in the area of network and collaborative computing. One of these includes the possibility to take several mathematics modules. These courses are taught with one week intensive modules on a subject. This meant that I spent the past week teaching the first Linear Algebra module. This module covers direct and indirect methods for solving systems of linear algebraic equations.

In my previous entry I mentioned that I was still suffering the after effects of flu – meaning I started the week with a sore throat. Not the best way to start when one is lecturing 10+ hours and when one has to be available to answer questions during 10+ hours of practical sessions.

This is the first time I have lectured this course – before I had only taught the practical sessions. Overall it went fairly well – though I was really struggling to speak by the end of the week. I taught it from an old set of lecture notes, produced by previous lecturers of this course – which at least meant that the preparation time was not too great.