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Welcome

Welcome to my website. This space is intended to showcase various projects, both professional and personal, old and new. Professionally I'm most defined by a physics background. I did an MPhys masters degree from 2002 to 2006, with a final year project on polymer solar cells, and a PhD from 2006 to 2011 on nuclear fusion. Energy and sustainability are strong interests of mine, hence the energy theme. I subsequently worked in particle physics at CERN, and spent some time as a physics teaching assistant. Swapping academia for the startup world, I then worked in R&D for a business intelligence company, covering a number of technical projects with a focus on Natural Language Processing. Along the way I also spent a year and a half in Japan as an English teacher, and I continue to enjoy learning Japanese.

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In another life I would've focussed more on my creative side. I've always loved all kinds of art, anything that means making something with personality. Drawing, painting, photography, music, writing, games, websites - I've dabbled with a bit of everything. A big part of this site is currently dedicated to photography, which has been my main creative outlet in recent years.

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And that really is a big part of the reason for this site - to give myself a focus and a reason for making more. More what? More everything! This is, I guess you could say, a personal magazine of anything that interests me, a place to bring everything together rather than having different things scattered around different sites. I hope that visitors can find something in these pages which is interesting and inspiring for them too.

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--- Darren Temple

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LinkedIn

GitHub

YouTube

Curriculum vitae

Work Experience

Logo_Xapien.png

Xapien (London, UK)

Product engineer

Jul 2018 - Dec 2019​

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  • Core R&D as the first employee for this business intelligence start-up

  • Lead Python developer for API, tools, analysis, visualisation, machine learning

  • Natural Language Processing for information extraction and categorisation

  • Graph network creation and analysis

  • AWS to deploy and manage services

  • Docker experience

Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada) & CERN (Geneva, Switzerland)

Research assistant & teaching assistant

Feb 2014 - Dec 2016
 

CERN:

  • Python data analysis for the ATLAS particle physics detector

  • Developed data content (maximised usability, minimised storage)

  • Handled data requests for Monte Carlo simulation and experiment

  • Jira used for project management

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SFU:

  • Teaching assistant for undergraduate physics lab and tutorials (instruction, assistance, examination, marking)

  • Courses taken: Machine Learning (A-); Particle Physics (A-); Quantum Field Theory (A-)

  • Created internal group website: XWiki running on Tomcat in CentOS environment

  • Created external group website: WordPress site, including a detailed public learning section

  • Websites secured via SSL; Git backup; Thoroughly documented for future admins

SFU HEP Group Website

SFU HEP Group Website Admin Guide (redacted public version)

32.22 MB (link opens browser viewer, no auto download)

Interac (Hiroshima, Japan)

English language instructor

May 2012 - Sep 2013
 

  • Taught >1000 students per month in numerous elementary schools

  • Worked in Hiroshima's foremost public senior high school

  • Designed lessons using a variety of techniques and media

  • Delivered lessons in a clear, engaging, and enjoyable style

  • Group management and strong communication were vital

Imperial College (London, UK) & Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (Oxford, UK)

Research assistant & PhD in plasma physics

Sep 2006 - Sep 2011
 

  • Planned and executed plasma experiments with the MAST tokamak at CCFE

  • Doppler spectroscopy of injected helium for radial electric field measurement

  • Maintained spectroscopic equipment

  • Wrote C software to model injected helium into plasma (1D flux model, 3D Monte Carlo model)

  • Wrote IDL software to analyse raw spectroscopic data

  • Wrote extensive documentation and tutorials

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This work led to the discovery of an unexpected profile structure of the quantity being measured, which is a potentially significant result with implications for plasma confinement.

PhD thesis: Experimental Investigations into the Radial Electric Field of MAST

22.50 MB (link opens browser viewer, no auto download)

MPhil to PhD transfer report: Modelling Helium Injection in MAST

12.26 MB (link opens browser viewer, no auto download)

CCFE internal report: ECELESTE

7.67 MB (link opens browser viewer, no auto download)

CCFE internal report: EZ-Graphics

4.11 MB (link opens browser viewer, no auto download)

The University of Sheffield (South Yorkshire, UK)

Summer studentship sponsored by The Nuffield Foundation
Jul 2005 - Sep 2005
 

  • Assessed the FLUKA Monte Carlo radiation transport code, prior to its use for ATLAS shielding design at CERN

  • Wrote C software to analyse and compare the model output to experimental data

  • Reported on findings

Virgin Retail (Bromley, UK)

Cash office clerk, customer assistant & stock processor
Oct 2001 - Sep 2002

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  • Responsible for video games department: implemented new stock control methods; helped launch new hardware; day-to-day operations

  • Progressed to run the cash office: handled all store income; kept updated financial paperwork; provided head-office reports; solved discrepancy issues; trained other cash office staff

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The stated working period was between my A-level and university education, but Virgin Retail also welcomed me back a number of times during university vacation periods.

Education

Imperial College (London, UK) & Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (Oxford, UK)

Research assistant & PhD in plasma physics

Sep 2006 - Sep 2011

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  • See the “Work Experience” section for details

The University of Sheffield (South Yorkshire, UK)

MPhys masters degree in physics
Sep 2002 - June 2006

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  • First class honours

  • First class results averaged each year

  • Final year prize for experimental work into polymer solar cells

  • Final year project led to a major new branch of research for the university

  • Summer studentship assessing FLUKA computational models for CERN

Darrick Wood Secondary School (Bromley, UK)

A-level
Sep 1999 - Jul 2001

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  • Maths, physics, chemistry

  • School prefect, guiding younger students

Darrick Wood Secondary School (Bromley, UK)

GCSE
Sep 1994 - Jul 1999

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  • Business, graphic design, core subjects

Extra qualifications

International TEFL and TESOL Training (ITTT)

120-hour complete course in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)
2012 - Jan 2013

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  • “Having performed significantly higher than the required level in all course assignments, Darren has been awarded a pass at grade A”

Awards

The University of Sheffield (South Yorkshire, UK)

The Clarke Prize for Experimental Physics
June 2006

Tools & technologies

​Programming

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  • Python

    • Most recent and most in-depth real-world use since 2014, for academic, business, and personal projects

    • Most recent project focussed on Natural Language Processing (NLP), creating a JSON-in/out Flask API

    • Familiar with handling multiple virtual environments with conda and virtualenv

  • Jupyter

    • Used for general data exploration and testing Python code

    • Used to make front-end graphical tools to access back-end Python Flask APIs

  • C++

    • Started to learn in 2003, my first programming language as part of my physics degree

    • Used for physics simulation

    • Used for game creation with Unreal

  • C#

    • Started to learn in 2020

    • Used for game creation with Unity

  • IDL

    • Interactive Data Language. A licensed language similar to MatLab. Used within a few niche fields, such as fusion, satellite imaging, and medical imaging.

    • Heavy use from 2006 to 2011 as the main workhorse for my PhD

    • Used for physics data analysis and graphical tools

  • MatLab

    • Used since 2006 on and off for physics simulation and academic projects

  • Octave

    • Used in 2017 only for Andrew Ng's Machine Learning course

Data

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  • SQL

    • Started to learn in 2017

    • Used in practice for extracting data from large business intelligence sources

  • Neo4j

    • Started to learn in 2018

    • Used for experimental graph database creation and analysis

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

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  • spaCy

    • Started to learn in 2018

    • In-depth use including higher features, such as custom attributes and retokenisation

  • Word-vectors

    • Started to learn in 2018

    • Experience with Word2Vec, gloVe, and fastText, including use via Python libraries such as Gensim

  • Regex

Game creation

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  • Unity

    • Started to learn in 2020

    • One full simple game and a few test projects made to date

  • Unreal

    • Started to learn in 2017, with a reboot in 2021

    • A few test projects made to date. Currently collaborating on a first person shooter, responsible for AI.

Web

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  • Wix

    • This website!

  • WordPress

    • Started to learn in 2011

    • Used for the first version of this website

    • Used for the Simon Fraser University Particle Physics Group website, including full CentOS server management of TomCat container deployment

  • HTML / CSS / JavaScript

    • Basic understanding of the main web stack from various reading and online courses

Other

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  • AWS

    • Started to learn in 2017 as part of the fast.ai NLP course

    • Used in practice for deploying Python Flask APIs via Elastic Beanstalk, EC2, S3 etc.

  • Docker

    • Started to learn in 2018

    • Used for Neo4j graph database deployment

  • Git

    • Used since 2014 for academic, business, and personal projects

  • JIRA

    • Used for task and group management from 2014 to 2016 work with CERN, and again in 2019

  • LaTeX

    • Used since 2009 for academic reports, essays, and PhD thesis

Languages

  • English (native)

  • Japanese (intermediate)

    • Started to learn in 2012 shortly before moving to Japan for a year and a half

    • Continual hobby learning since 2012, mostly self-study with various resources

    • Daily reading and listening practice with articles and flashcards

Outreach

To help with awareness for my PhD research area of fusion energy, I created a presentation for upper high school students directly after completing my thesis. This was my first teaching experience and received very positive feedback from the schools I visited. I have since developed this work to be given at university level, and am planning to record as a YouTube video.

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