1. DR. ZEN MICHAEL HARPER
Email zen.harper@cantab.net Mobile 07933 853 869
Exceptionally strong British mathematician; searching for an extremely challenging position
combining my mathematical and programming skills in a commercial environment, tackling
very hard problems at a company which values quality, innovation and creativity.
· Two years of commercial software development in C++ and Java.
· Almost thirty years programming as a hobby: began programming games in BASIC
around the age of eight, and C++ programming in the 1990s before entering university.
· Five published research papers; numerous lecture notes and articles for students and
teachers.
Interests include:
· Data science; mathematical modelling; numerical optimisation.
· Design and development of highly complex mathematical and statistical software.
· Complex algorithm design and analysis.
Flexible about location; will relocate for the right job.
EDUCATION
Leeds University (2000 – 2004)
Ph.D. in Pure Mathematics (Functional Analysis, Complex Analysis, Operator Theory).
· Supervised by Prof. Jonathan R. Partington, thesis title:
“Hankel operators, convolutions and other operators related to linear systems”.
Studied equations of interest both within mathematics and also for Linear Systems and
Control Theory in Engineering, from a rigorous mathematical point of view.
Trinity College, Cambridge University (1996 – 2000)
Part III Mathematics, passed with Merit. (This is a one year taught M.Sc. equivalent).
B.A. (Hons) Mathematics; first class in each year (Parts IA, IB, IIB).
· Pure and applied mathematics; statistics; computer science.
· C++ Computer Projects: sorting algorithms; computational number theory; cryptography.
Bristol Grammar School (1989 – 1996)
Four A levels: Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry (AAAB); ten GCSEs.
At that time, A* grades did not exist for these A level examinations.
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2. EMPLOYMENT
Software engineer at Ocado, Hatfield (November 2014 – March 2015)
Working in the Routing team, which is responsible for the routing optimisation engine, written
in Java. There are many thousands of deliveries per day to be made around the UK, in hourly
time slots, using hundreds of vehicles. The engine calculates a cost effective way to make the
deliveries.
· Maintaining, testing and improving the existing production system.
· Developing the cloud–based new replatformed system.
Software engineer at Telsis, near Southampton (July 2014 – September 2014)
Telsis was developing software to control telephone call routing, SMS delivery and filtering, to
run on both standard and legacy hardware.
· Java programming, documentation and testing for telephone call routing software.
Software developer at HP Autonomy, Cambridge (March 2013 – July 2014)
Working in the Computer Vision team, mainly on 2D and 3D object detection: locating an
object of precisely known shape in an image or video; calculating the unknown position and 3D
orientation of the camera from the object’s 2D location in the image.
· Designing and writing C++ production software (Windows and Linux), and test pro-
grammes in Python and Perl.
· One software patent pending (new methods and solutions for certain important problems,
potentially 10 times faster than all previous known methods).
· Debugging and improvements to the existing C++ codebase; many detailed suggestions
for algorithmic and implementation improvements in critical components (giving speedup
factors of 3–5 or greater, without excessive code rewriting).
· Designed, wrote and tested a general numerical nonlinear least squares routine in C++,
adapting and improving known algorithms; final product significantly faster than standard
library routines.
· Adapted open source C++ software for reading barcodes (Zxing), including checks for
international character sets (e.g. Chinese and Japanese characters).
Schoolteacher and private tutor in Shanghai, China (2009 – 2012)
Teaching mathematics and physics (in English) to pupils aged 15–18.
Mathematics lecturer and researcher in Bangkok, Thailand (2005 – 2009)
Lecturing (in English) at three universities: Chulalongkorn, Mahidol, Thammasat.
· Numerous mathematics courses for B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. students.
Responsible for lecture delivery; syllabus design and content; exam setting; marking.
· Postdoctoral research.
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