Research

I currently work as a Research Software Engineer (RSE) and am part of the RSE Team at Newcastle University.

I have worked on a number of research projects with colleagues in various disciplines at Newcastle University, as well as other partners across the UK and around the world, including the NHS and Turing Institute. Check out my profile page on the RSE Team website for more information about my work.

Below are details of some of my contributions to various academic and research projects.

Colouring Cities

I have been part of the Colouring Cities Research Programme (CCRP) for a number of years. The CCRP is an international collaboration collecting and sharing data about our buildings. The aim is to enable easier sharing of open data to support various stakeholders in their decision-making processes and to help make progress towards UN Sustainability goals.

A screenshot of the Colouring Cities website. A colourful map takes up most of the screen, with a menu on the left, featuring large, colour-coded buttons representing the twelve main data categories.

Colouring Britain

My contribution has been to convert the original Colouring London prototype into a core platform that partners can use to create Colouring Cities websites around the world. I have also been involved with Colouring Britain and the development of the Colouring Cities Impact Studies Showcase. More information about the project can be found on ColouringCities.org. The CCRP GitHub page containing source code and documentation is here.

Visualising Uncertainty

For several years, I worked with Prof Nick Holliman, Newcastle University’s Professor of Visualisation, on a project to explore new ways to automate data visualisation and visualise uncertainty.

Visualising Uncertainty

I developed the software to create visualisations using Blender and Python, then developed a more user-friendly pipeline integrating the tools with Microsoft Power BI and Azure.

BESiDE

BESiDE (Built Environment for Social Inclusion in the Digital Economy) was “a multidisciplinary research group. Led by Professor Vicki Hanson, we included researchers from Computing, Design, and Healthcare at the University of Dundee and from Computing at Newcastle University.”

I worked with the team to develop software to evaluate and improve care home environments for older adults living in residential care.

PhD

In 2017, I completed a PhD entitled Real-time Simulation of Rail Vehicle Dynamics. This research involved building a real-time rail dynamics simulation tool using NVIDIA PhysX and other technologies from the video games industry.

Locomotion was produced as part of my PhD. It attempted to produce real-time rail vehicle simulations using software, tools, and development practices from the video games industry. The tool was produced as part of a joint venture between Newcastle University’s Systems Research Team and NewRail.

Locomotion

The aim of the project was to test whether video game physics engines can produce meaningful, real-time engineering simulations.

Publications

Here are some of the publications that I have contributed to:

“Visual Entropy and the Visualization of Uncertainty” - Nicolas S. Holliman, Arzu Coltekin, Sara J. Fernstad, Michael D. Simpson, Kevin J. Wilson, Andrew J. Woods [link]
“A Platform for the Analysis of Qualitative and Quantitative Data about the Built Environment and Its Users” - Simpson M, Woodman S, Hiden H, Stein S, Dowsland S, Turner M, Hanson VL, Watson P [link]
“Utilisation of Video Game Physics Techniques in Real-Time Simulation of the Wheel-Rail Interface for Predicted Derailment of Rail Vehicles” - Dr Mike Simpson, Dr William Blewitt, Dr Gary Ushaw, Dr Graham Morgan [link]

For a full, up-to-date list of publications, visit my profiles on Google Scholar or ORCiD.