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career

PhD Graduation Ceremony

less than 1 minute read

Published:

It was a wonderful occasion to reflect on and celebrate the PhD experience with colleagues at a very special graduation ceremony organised by the University of York. Having missed my original BSc graduation back in 2000, it was great to finally wear the gown and receive the award on stage. I will always be grateful to all those people who made it possible for me to enage in these years of study, training and research.

PhD Thesis Published

2 minute read

Published:

front cover of PhD thesisAfter minor corrections, my thesis dissertation was approved and is now live at the White Rose E-theses Repository. This completes a very eventful, challenging and rewarding 5 years since stepping out of my career as a school teacher to pursue a long-held ambition to learn more and engage in cutting edge research. I am very grateful to my supervisors for all their help and to my family for all their support.

Teaching on AI Course

less than 1 minute read

Published:

I’m getting the chance to be back at the front of a class! I’ve been employed as a part-time lecturer, in order to teach part of a Masters level course on AI: Problem Solving with Search here at the University of York. I will be co-teaching with the module leader, and it involves everything from writing lectures, labs and quizzes to setting, marking and moderating the exams.

PhD Thesis Submitted

less than 1 minute read

Published:

Four eventful years after stepping out of school as a teacher back into university as a student I submitted by PhD Thesis on the topic of Learning SAT Encodings for Constraint Satisfaction Problems. What a relief! I’m looking forward to picking up some of the research projects which were on hold while the write-up was completed. And of course awaiting the viva!

YPAD leading to Associate Fellowship of the HEA

less than 1 minute read

Published:

After completing the York Professional and Academic Development scheme (YPAD) and submitting a report of my teaching-related experience I was awarded Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. As part of my report I carried out a brief investigation into using summative assessment results to inform teaching and assessment in the next cohort. Per-question breakdown of the marks allows some rudimentary statistical analysis which can shed light on how questions could be improved or which concepts and skills might be particularly difficult for students.

GTA of the Year Award

less than 1 minute read

Published:

I was very honoured to receive the “Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year” award after “GTA-ing” in a number of contexts, both in-person and remotely during the pandemic.

constraint programming

Fun with LinkedIn Queens and Constraints

5 minute read

Published:

I’ve enjoyed solving the LinkedIn Queens puzzle most mornings since they introduced it earlier this year. The problem requires the player to place the queens on a board according to a very brief set of constraints (or rules). For a bit of fun, I wanted to solve the puzzle automatically (or as close as possible) using constraint programming.

constraints

The Bookshelves Problem

less than 1 minute read

Published:

It was good fun to submit an optimisation problem to the CSPLib web site. This was a real-life problem (or opportunity?) to use some discarded planks of wood to build a set of bookshelves. The idea was to create some bookshelves which would accommodate books of a mininum height and would maximise the shelf space given the collection of planks I was left with.

phd

PhD Thesis Submitted

less than 1 minute read

Published:

Four eventful years after stepping out of school as a teacher back into university as a student I submitted by PhD Thesis on the topic of Learning SAT Encodings for Constraint Satisfaction Problems. What a relief! I’m looking forward to picking up some of the research projects which were on hold while the write-up was completed. And of course awaiting the viva!

problem solving

The Bookshelves Problem

less than 1 minute read

Published:

It was good fun to submit an optimisation problem to the CSPLib web site. This was a real-life problem (or opportunity?) to use some discarded planks of wood to build a set of bookshelves. The idea was to create some bookshelves which would accommodate books of a mininum height and would maximise the shelf space given the collection of planks I was left with.

publications

PhD Thesis Published

2 minute read

Published:

front cover of PhD thesisAfter minor corrections, my thesis dissertation was approved and is now live at the White Rose E-theses Repository. This completes a very eventful, challenging and rewarding 5 years since stepping out of my career as a school teacher to pursue a long-held ambition to learn more and engage in cutting edge research. I am very grateful to my supervisors for all their help and to my family for all their support.

Teaching on AI Course

less than 1 minute read

Published:

I’m getting the chance to be back at the front of a class! I’ve been employed as a part-time lecturer, in order to teach part of a Masters level course on AI: Problem Solving with Search here at the University of York. I will be co-teaching with the module leader, and it involves everything from writing lectures, labs and quizzes to setting, marking and moderating the exams.

teaching

YPAD leading to Associate Fellowship of the HEA

less than 1 minute read

Published:

After completing the York Professional and Academic Development scheme (YPAD) and submitting a report of my teaching-related experience I was awarded Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. As part of my report I carried out a brief investigation into using summative assessment results to inform teaching and assessment in the next cohort. Per-question breakdown of the marks allows some rudimentary statistical analysis which can shed light on how questions could be improved or which concepts and skills might be particularly difficult for students.

GTA of the Year Award

less than 1 minute read

Published:

I was very honoured to receive the “Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year” award after “GTA-ing” in a number of contexts, both in-person and remotely during the pandemic.