Curriculum Vitae

Personal Details

Full Name: James Michael Begley

Profile Summary

Employment

September 2008 – present, Systems Engineering & Assessment Ltd, Bristol, UK

Currently employed as a senior consultant within a systems engineering and software development company. Example projects worked on include the following:

Technical Lead for the Digital Traffic Enforcement System (DTES) and the Parking Enforcement Solution (PES), two bespoke software systems developed for Transport for London (TfL). DTES is a system that allows TfL enforcement officers to view up to 4 CCTV streams simultaneously and capture evidential video footage of contraventions when they are observed. PES is an on street enforcement system, allowing enforcement officers to capture parking contraventions using an application on their mobile phone.
Algorithm development for the Hard Shoulder Monitoring System (HASMOS), a prototype system developed for the Highways Agency. The HASMOS algorithm was developed as part of the M42 "Managed Motorways" program which used data from a variety of sensors (including radar and induction loops) to determine whether the hard shoulder of the motorway was clear of any obstructions before it could be used as a running lane.
Model development for ship simulation. SEA has worked with the Ministry of Defence to developed an accurate physics based simulation of ship movement under various conditions. This has been used investigate the performance of equipment and manoeuvres (such as Replenishment At Sea activities or the launch and recovery of a Submersible Rescue Vehicle) without resorting to difficult or dangerous sea trials in challenging sea states.

January 2007 – June 2008, Integrate Systems Engineering Ltd, Bath, UK

Employed as a consultant within a small systems engineering consultancy company. Example projects worked on include the following:

Data Analysis Manager for TfL Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) tag & beacon technology trials for the London Congestion Charge. TfL were considering the deployment of DSRC tag & beacon technology, in order to improve efficiency and allow for more flexibility in charging policies and to assist with the enforcement of the congestion charge. Main responsibilities included leading the performance analysis of the data collected over two years of the trials, which was stored in various SQL server databases.
Development of a company intranet site, implemented using Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server, including a custom document register developed using a combination of C# and ASP.NET code, storing the document meta-data in a SQL server database.

September 2001 – December 2006, Marine Research Institute, Reykjavik, Iceland

Employed as the lead programmer within the modelling department of the Icelandic Marine Research Institute, working on statistical models of marine populations. Example projects worked on include the following:

Leading the development of Gadget, the Globally applicable Area-Disaggregated General Ecosystem Toolbox. Gadget is a software tool, written in C++, to model marine ecosystems, which works uses a statistical framework to compare the development of a modelled ecosystem to observed data, and then adjusts the parameters and iteratively re-runs the model until an optimum is found. Using the Gadget framework to investigate of the population dynamics of the Icelandic cod stock. This detailed model used data collected from various sources in differing formats, stored in a central PostgreSQL database. The results from this exhaustive modelling exercise have been published in peer reviewed journals.
Producing written documentation, including a detailed user guide and examples, an automated regression test suite and the Gadget website
Co-ordination and leadership of team programming activities to achieve key development milestones within an EU funded fisheries research program.

January 1996 – September 2001, Systems Engineering & Assessment Ltd, Bath, UK

Employed as a systems engineer within a consultancy company, with over 5 years experience and wide ranging responsibilities, including:

data analysis and algorithm investigation
mathematical modelling of physical systems
database application development
computer simulation
systems and requirements engineering

Education

September 1994 - September 1995, University of Southampton, UK

MSc in Industrial Applied Mathematics. For MSc dissertation, 10 weeks were spent working at Pilkington Technology Centre on a project to enable defects in glass to be detected automatically during production, by investigating the relationship between defects in the glass and distortions in the surface profile. This involved modelling the distortions mathematically, and then writing a C++ programme to compare the model results with laboratory data.

September 1991 – June 1994, University of York, UK

BSc(Hons) in Mathematics, grade awarded: Upper second class (2i).

Skills

Scientific computing, including programming in C++, C and C#, and database programming using Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL, to be run on both Linux and Windows platforms.
Experience of using various modelling packages, including statistical analysis using R, software design in UML using Enterprise Architect and mathematical analysis using MatLab.
ITIL v3 Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management.
ILM Skills for Change.
First Aid at Work qualification from St Johns Ambulance
Full, clean UK driving licence.

Interests & Activities

Active member and journal editor of a local caving club, and have enjoyed several expeditions to explore new caves in remote areas of Iceland and Thailand. Rescue warden and webmaster for Mendip Cave Rescue, the local voluntary cave rescue service. Also enjoy many other outdoor activities, including skiing, cycling and running.

References

References available on request.