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Andy Heath is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool. I am funded through research projects that require engineering of bespoke software to solve particular scientific problems. My work has ranged from the creation of two very large software systems (each requiring over 5 years work) through to much smaller projects of just a few months. I also contribute to the writing of research proposals.

My particular interests are parallel computing, process modelling and 3D visualisation but I am also keen to explore new ideas/areas and expand my network of collaborators. My PhD research involved x-ray diffraction and modelling the structure of solids - this got me thinking in 3D!

History

I joined the Department of Earth & Ocean Sciences in early 1991 on a 3 month contract to investigate the potential of a then new software system, Stratamodel™, to model sub-seismic faulting. This small piece of work helped lead to a successful research proposal and I was contracted to work for 3 years with Juan Watterson's Fault Analysis Group and Steve Flint to investigate the flow sensitivity of clastic petroleum reservoirs to sub-seismic faulting. At that time Stratamodel™ could not adequately incorporate geologically realistic faults into a cellular model and I wrote FaMOUS to compensate for this lack of functionality and to achieve the goals of the project ― FaMOUS subsequently occupied me until 1998...

I continued to work exclusively with the Fault Analysis Group (FAG) until the Group's relocation to University College Dublin in the summer of 2000. I remained in Liverpool and developed a range of interests and collaborations with researchers both within the department and national/international research groups and individuals.

In the autumn of 2000 the three scientists from the department who successfully bid for a then state-of-the-art supercomputer began to make use of the 130 node Beowulf cluster named NESSC. I couldn't resist getting my hands on this new technology and this led to collaborations with each of the three principal investigators and other interesting spin-offs.

I write scientific software: ideally applications that serve to export research ideas into the wider science community in much the same way as a well understood paper. Most of my software provides a 3D graphical view of processes and data but I don't consider myself principally a visualisation scientist.

My PhD was predominantly practical: experiments conducted within diamond anvil cells containing samples under extremely high pressures and exposed to x-rays generated by a Synchrotron Radiation Source. The outputs of these experiments were digital - diffracted radiations captured by a solid-state detector. There was no software available at Daresbury Laboratory, in 1985, to analyse these results and so I was told to write some by my supervisor. Once started, I found the writing of analysis, modelling and visualisation software was in itself a very rewarding activity and I was hooked.

I began with Fortran, moved into the C programming language and found my home in C++ in the mid '90s. I use libraries such as OpenGL, MPI, TNT or anything else required to solve a particular problem. My Fortran 95 skills have been kept up-to-date by advising the department's 2^nd year Geophysics undergraduates for a couple of months each year and coding some high performance parallel Fortran codes running on our clusters.

I have been involved in many research proposals and their resulting projects – the purpose of my involvement at the proposal stage is mainly to contribute ideas and expertise that can enhance and extend the original scope of a project.