Hello, and happy November!

I’ve been fairly quiet the past few years. You know, covid. Stuff has been happening, but I’ve done a pretty bad job of communicating. There have been some really fantastic highlights, and I’m going to try to post every fortnight for the rest of the year to catch up!

Fuza is still going, we’ve just been pivoting things a bit. These past 3 years have seen not just covid, but also the birth of my two boys, and the undertaking of a PhD. I’ve been writing a lot, just not blog posts, having conducted research for and written 10+ academic papers and a huge thesis. Anyway, here is a heads up on some of the topics you can expect over the coming months. And a random photo of me in the Brecons.

A PhD whilst having two kids… that’s crazy!

The next set will be about the research I’ve done during my PhD, one of the big things I’ve been up to over the past 3 years. We’ll “inspect and adapt” as ever, but I’m hoping to share something industry-useful about each peer-reviewed paper I’ve done. They are all about AI and/or system architecture diagrams.

Doing COVID public policy research and a postdoc… whilst doing a PhD

I’ve also been helping with scientific advice to support covid. Here’s a paper I wrote with some awesome researchers, mostly from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, about a study in summer 2021. We argue that views of the public should be gathered early when making modelling decisions – something that reflects agile product principles, and that we hope will help modellers to make better assumptions in their models of “plausible worlds”, in which there may be different interventions conducted. I’m planning on sharing some informal experiences of doing research to inform public policy (for UK COVID response), and of doing a postdoc on digital twins… Spoiler alert: I’m no longer doing either of those things.

Building back better (sic)

And, to complete the catchup, I’ll share what I’ve been up to these past 6months+ as CTO of the incredibly awesome PorthouseDean structural engineers (we make sure your fancy new extension or loft conversion doesn’t fall down). This company is really cool, not least because we have awesome plans for growth and disruptive innovation in the world of structural engineering calculations, so watch this space! I’m continuing to do research and also continuing supporting lovely clients and charities with their data systems. The overarching theme on all this work is making analytical decisions accessible.

I’ll keep you “posted” on how this goes – and as ever please reach out if you’d like to chat.