Alex

My Education

First Class Honours BSc Computer Science graduate (81.2% average), University of Southampton, UK.

Dissertation

• Designed and implemented a robotically controlled arch for dataset generation in Reflectance Transformation Imaging. Involved:
  • Mechanical design of the system
    • FreeCAD
    • 3D printing
  • Electronics design of the controller
    • KiCad
    • High current switching design
  • Control software for the arch / camera
    • Arduino C(++) with Python control library
    • Bluetooth controller for phone camera
  • I built upon the Polynomial Texture Mapping algorithm using a novel higher order multinomials technique - see diagrams below

The final product

Biquadratic modelling (orange) of pixel response values (blue) as outlined in the original Polynomial Texture Mapping paper

Using a higher order (degree 3) polynomial to better model the specular reflection (note the steeper peak)

Other Things

• In 2021 I gave a talk to my University’s Cybersecurity society on an introduction to hardware hacking; slides can be found here.

University Modules

Optional University Modules

Year 3

• Computer Vision
  • Varied mix of traditional and modern computer vision techniques
  • Point and group operators, edge detection, feature extraction, machine learning for computer vision, PCA
• Foundations of Machine Learning
  • Mathematics underpinning machine learning algorithms, probability, regression and classification, PCA
• Robotic Systems
  • Kinematics (forward and inverse), robot configurations, trajectory generation, sensors, computer vision and bio-inspired robotics
• Security of Cyber Physical Systems
  • Low level details of the Trusted Platform Module
  • Using machine learning to detect pricing manipulations in a smart grid
• Natural Language Processing
  • Regex, classical NLP techniques, neural NLP techniques (RNNs, GRUs, Transformers)

    Year 2

• Computer Systems II
  • Focus on AVR hardware, scheduling, MMIO, security of embedded hardware
  • LCD graphics library project can be found here

Other University Modules

• Programming I (intro to OOP)
• Foundations of Computer Science (mathematical fundamentals to an array of CS topics)
• Computer Systems I (high level overview of CPU architecture, bits and bytes, electronics basics)
• Software Modelling (formal modelling and verification)
• Programming II (more Java OOP)
• Algorithmics (algorithms and datastructures)
• Data Management (Relational model and SQL, Git, Unix)
• Intelligent Systems (classical machine learning algorithms)
• Interaction Design
• Theory of Computer Science (time and space complexity, determinism etc.)
• Programming III (functional programming in Haskell)
• Distributed Systems and Networks (TCP/IP, distributed algorithms, Java networking)
• Programming Language Concepts (execution model, lexing, parsing, programming language design)
• Software Engineering Group Project (semester-long project using agile methods)