I have been programming for eight years, having initially learned to program in C before largely switching to Python 3 in 2016. The skill set I have developed in this time has proved invaluable, allowing me to approach and solve a wide variety of problems.
Education
PhD Physics University of Bristol
2016-2021
Title: Development of Apparatus for Ice Nucleation Studies.
The fundamentals of what makes a good ice nucleator remain poorly understood at the nanoscale. In my PhD I developed three experimental methods:
- A novel way of automating a standard experimental technique (published)
- An updated version of an automated lag time apparatus (ALTA) for ice nucleation studies
- An environmental chamber for freezing acoustically levitated water droplets.
Some relevant highlights of my PhD work include:
- A program for detecting freezing droplets from a series of images, including tracking the movement of the droplets, written in Python using OpenCV.
- Reverse engineering the instruction set for a picolitre droplet printer, allowing a custom labVIEW program integrated with an X-Y translation stage to be written.
- Python scripts for cleaning, analysing, simulating and graphing data using standard scientific libraries (NumPy, SciPy and Matplotlib)
- Programmed microcontrollers (Arduino and pyBoard) to read peripherals and control experiments.
MSci Physics University of Bristol
2012-2016
First class honours
A-levels Alleyns School
2005-2012
Physics A*, Maths A*, Economics A (AS-level politics A)
Software Development Skills
Python 3
Misc.
Projects
Automated Time-Lag Apparatus. Not a personal project, as it was a chapter of my thesis. However, it is well documented to allow future students to contnue to use it.
I wanted to create custom themed cryptic crosswords, but couldn't find any free software to do it. It uses very shallow recursion to fit words from a theme dictionary, while still allowing the rest of the grid to be filled from a larger dictionary.
The pH of soil/hydroponic solution can have a huge impact on the growth of the plants they host. This device measures the pH of the reservoir at a set interval, and then can pump from an acid/alkali reservoir to maintain a given pH.
Publications
Cook et al., A pyroelectric thermal sensor for automated ice nucleation detection. (2020) Atmos. Meas. Tech. Disc. 13, 2785–2795
Cook et al., An updated automated lag-time apparatus for ice nucleation studies. Awaiting submission.