Dr Matthew Thompson

mthompson.org

github.com/cblop

matt@mthompson.org

+44(0)7476237117

Profile

Web and mobile app developer with experience in Clojure(Script), functional programming, Artificial Intelligence research and logic programming. Enthusiastic Clojure developer and event organiser within the Bristol tech community.

Experience

• iO Academy: 2023 - Present

  Trainer

  Leading and delivering 16-week full-stack web development courses for people changing careers

• Kroo Bank Ltd: 2022 - 2023

  Senior Developer

  Backend development in Clojure, along with React Native mobile application development and load testing

• Jordan River Advisors: 2021 - 2022

  Senior Developer

  Full-stack Clojure(Script) developer in an early stage startup bringing financial tools to American farmers

• ELiT Ltd, Bristol, UK: 2018 - 2021

  Software Engineer

  I worked as a full-stack Clojure(Script) developer, creating apps that use Machine Learning techniques to help students learn English

• Bath Spa University: 2016 - 2018

  Lecturer in Creative Computing

  I spent two years lecturing in Games Design, Web Development and Digital Storytelling, while pursuing research into using AI for story-based games

• University of Bath, UK: 2016 - 2017

  Research Associate

  Post-doctoral work involving the creation of front-end tools (in ClojureScript) for the tagging and processing of large datasets as part of the ENLITEN project

• Sysemia Ltd, Bristol, UK: 2013 - 2016

  Research Engineer

  AI, semantic web, interactive narrative and intelligent agent research as part of my EngD doctorate with the University of Bath.

Education

• University of Bath, UK

  EngD doctorate in Digital Media, 2012 - 2018

• University of York, UK

  MSc degree in Natural Computation, 2012

• University of Exeter, UK

  Upper Second Class (2:1) BSc degree in Computer Science, 2006

Skills and Projects

• Clojure & ClojureScript development experience:

  • 5+ years of experience as a full-stack Clojure(Script) developer

  • Use of event-sourcing to help scale and maintain Kroo's banking infrastructure with Clojure

  • Worked as a full stack developer to create financial tools for American farmers using Clojure, Fulcro and Datomic

  • Development of APIs and tools using Clojure, Re-frame and AWS to support Cambridge English Assessment's Natural Language Processing research for English Learners

  • Use of Clojure with Semantic Web technology (RDF and SPARQL) for the creation and querying of graph databases

  • Creation of a constrained natural language DSL in Clojure

  • A hybrid mobile app for Bluetooth LE beacon detection and media display using ClojureScript, Reagent and Apache Cordova.

  • Rewriting an XMPP agent messaging service from Java to Clojure

  • Extended Overtone (a synthesiser library) to enable use of LADSPA audio plugins

• Developer training and mentoring

  At iO Academy, I deliver 16-week intensive coding bootcamp courses to in-person groups in our classroom in Bath. This requires a very high level of interpersonal skills, communication ability, organisation skills and attention to detail. I have been able to deliver course material to a very high standard in a creative and engaging way, as is expected by the academy.

• Application scaling

  At Kroo Bank, I worked in the scaling team that was responsible for tackling the challenges that came with scaling up to hundreds of thousands of customers. This included integration of new customer support software and load testing our systems to make sure we could handle extra traffic.

• Tilley

  At Jordan River Advisors, I worked on a Clojure and ClojureScript web application to help farmers in the USA plan for their financial years. This involved making sense of the legalities of government grants and insurance entitlements to make sure the farmers were covered in case of shortfalls of crop yields. This role involved building an application from the ground up in a small team of five developers, using a Fulcro and Datomic stack.

• Write and Improve, Speak and Improve

  At ELiT I work on these customer-facing web applications to give English learners feedback on test English exams, both written and spoken. The system uses Cambridge English's NLP research to score and give feedback on a learner's progress. I work as a full-stack developer using Clojure (Integrant) with ClojureScript (Re-frame, reagent) and AWS infrastructure.

• Speech Annotator

  This is an internal ELiT tool used by a team of linguists to manually add annotations to the output of the automatic speech assessment system used in Speak and Improve. The human-produced annotations are then used to retrain the system in order to improve it. This is also a full-stack Clojure project using the same technologies as above.

• Semantic Web and Graph Database Experience

  This PostDoc project was to develop tools to simplify the addition of metadata to multiple large university datasets of smart home energy readings. This project used RDF and SPARQL to unify and enable querying across these multiple datasets.

• Logic and Agent Programming experience:

  EngD project uses Answer Set Programming (ASP, a logic programming paradigm) to constrain the actions of intelligent agents acting out the characters in a story. Given a author's description of a story using tropes (recurring story components), ASP code is generated and run through a solver to find the actions available to the characters at any given point in the story.

• Procedural Content Generation

  MSc project was to procedurally generate 3D bridge designs by evolving and 'growing' them. Designs were then evaluated using the Bullet Physics Engine, scripted in Python.

• Web and Mobile Application Development

  Over three years of experience with developing applications for iOS (iPhone) and Android platforms, primarily using web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, ClojureScript, Coffeescript and Javascript, and also with Objective C and Java.

• Languages

  5+ years experience: Clojure(Script)

  Also comfortable with: Prolog, Python, Javascript, Haskell, Java, C, C++, Lua

  Dev Ops: AWS, Git, Travis CI

  Spoken & written languages: English (Native), Japanese (Advanced)

• Community Engagement

  Organiser for two meetup groups in Bristol:

  • Bristol Clojurians

    Twice-monthly meetups and occasional talks and coding events since March 2014, growing into a group with more than 100 members.

  • Bristol Japanese Language Meetup

    Started in November 2013 with weekly Japanese conversation practice, as well as monthly events such as dinners and karaoke. This group has over 300 members, with 20 - 30 coming to the weekly events.

Publications

• Telling Non-Linear Stories with Interval Temporal Logic (ICIDS2015)

• Governing Narrative Events with Institutional Norms (CMN 2015)

• An Interactive, Generative Punch and Judy Show Using Institutions, ASP and Emotional Agents (COIN @ IJCAI 2015, AISB 2015)

• Artfinder: A Faceted Browser for Cross-Cultural Art Discovery (HSWI 2014)

• Effect of Touch Screen Size on Game Immersion (BCS HCI 2012)

References

• Will Murphy, Senior Developer at Kroo Bank

  Reference details upon request

• Dr Steve Battle, Industrial Supervisor (formerly at Sysemia Ltd)

  steve.battle@uwe.ac.uk