Dr. Richard. S. Wheeldon

Address: 7 Beatrice House, Bonham Road, London SW2 5HH

Home Phone: +44 (0) 20 7737 3857

E-Mail: richard@rswheeldon.com

Date of birth: 5th October 1977

 

Since June 2007, I have been working at Reuters (now Thomson Reuters) having previously worked at electronics manufacturer and security specialists Geoquip for 3 years. Before that I worked for UCL and NavigationZone whilst obtaining my PhD in Computer Science from Birkbeck University of London. I am currently looking for a technically absorbing role, preferably in an organisation or company with strong scientific or academic links and a commitment to open-source. I currently hold a U.K. passport and am willing to travel or relocate overseas. I am currently on a salary of £53000 + bonus.

 

My primary skill is as a developer of reliable, multi-threaded applications but I am also experienced in customer-facing roles and in system administration. I have over 8 years of professional experience working on Java, Linux and database related projects. I have an excellent understanding of the core Java J2SE APIs, Swing, JDBC, OOAD, XML, XSLT, Servlets, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Linux and multi-threaded, multi-server and parallel programming. This is backed up with a good understanding of the J2EE extensions, Struts, JSPs, RMI and shell scripting.

Qualifications

Academic

Professional

  • Sun Certified Java Programmer, 2003, SunEd
  • Java 5 Master, 2007, Brainbench (Highest score in UK, 5th highest worldwide)
  • Linux Administration (General) Master, 2005, Brainbench
  • Oracle 9i Administration, 2006, Brainbench
  • XML Concepts Master, 2006, Brainbench (2nd highest score in UK)
  • Java 2 – GUI Master, 2006, Brainbench (2nd highest score in UK)
  • Java 2 – Non GUI Master, 2006, Brainbench (7th highest score in UK)
  • SQL (ANSI) Master, 2006, Brainbench (6th highest score in UK)
  • Java 2 Fundamentals Master, 2006, Brainbench (2nd highest score in UK)
  • Bash Shell Scripting, 2006, Brainbench
  • Java XML Technologies, 2006, Brainbench
  • RDBMS Concepts, 2005, Brainbench
  • Information Technology Security Fundamentals, 2005, Brainbench
  • OO Concepts, 2006, Brainbench
  • OO Design Patterns, 2006, Brainbench

Employment History

Technical Specialist – Thomson Reuters (June 2007 – Present)

My time at Reuters has been divided between three projects – two video management systems named RCOMDAMS and TVDAMS and a new distribution system named Agency G3 designed to handle all of Reuters news agency content (currently consisting of over 20,000 news items a day). During my time at Reuters I have:

  • Developed a Java-based system using Struts, Colorado ftpd, MySQL, Spring, Apache, Tomcat, Maven and Hibernate which went live in October 2007.
  • Collaborated with a multi-national team developing a multi-server system for processing XML-based news stories using Java, MySQL, Tibco EMS / JMS messaging, JAX-WS.
  • Developed scripts, tools and applications for monitoring, archiving and numerous other systems tasks using Bash and occasionally Perl, Expect (TCL), Ex, C and Lisp.
  • Provided guidance and support to less experienced developers on best practices.

Senior Software Developer – Geoquip Worldwide (June 2004-June 2007)

Geoquip is a world leader in physical perimeter intrusion detection systems. Joining in 2004, I was promoted to Senior Developer early in 2006. I was responsible for the development of a Security Management System called GeoLog. During my time at Geoquip, GeoLog systems were installed in prisons and secure sites throughout EMEA and the US with further installations ongoing. During my time at Geoquip I:

  • Designed and implemented a multi-server, multi-threaded, internationalized thick client application using Java, Swing, PostgreSQL and RMI.
  • Wrote drivers for communicating with detection systems and CCTV equipment using various protocols via RS232, UDP, TCP/IP and SSL.
  • Designed the relational database schema for storing configuration data and alarm logs. All the SQL used in GeoLog was tested with PostgreSQL, Oracle and HSQL
  • Developed a report generation system using SQL to interrogate the database, XML to structure the data and XSL:FO to format it.
  • Extended the Apache FOP AWT viewer. This work was contributed back to the Apache project, along with numerous patches to add features, fix bugs and improve memory usage.
  • Developed two Slackware Linux-based live CDs – one acting as a demonstration, the other for installation.
  • Performed numerous management functions, including interviewing candidates, presenting to customers and liaising with out-of-house translators, technical authors and graphic designers.
  • Performed system administration tasks on the Linux firewalls, file and print servers including adding subversion repositories, daily builds, offline backups and other services for collaborative development.
  • Designed the PCB for a new IP-based alarm annunciation panel using Protel and reworked several existing circuit boards.

Developer - University College London (June 2002-March 2004)

Taco is a system for the presentation of online coursework, used by members of several departments throughout the University, chiefly the Computer Science department. As the primary developer I:

  • Liaised with staff and students to determine the requirements for the new system.
  • Redesigned and implemented the entire system in Java. A Type 2 (MVC) design was used, with Jakarta Struts as a framework and an Oracle database accessed via JDBC.
  • Investigated appropriate design patterns, J2EE technologies (e.g. JavaMail, EJB) and Taglibs which might reduce development time and improve maintainability.
  • Redesigned the Oracle-based database schema and associated SQL migration scripts.

I left at the end of the contract, with Taco completed and in active use.

Chief Programmer - NavigationZone (October 2000-May 2002)

Since research into hypertext navigation and trails was central to my PhD thesis, when the company NavigationZone was set-up to develop and exploit this technology, I was offered the job of chief programmer leading a small team collaborating on design, development and testing. During this time I:

  • Implemented an existing algorithm in Java for path-traversal in large, scale-free graphs then refined and tuned both the algorithm and the implementation.
  • Worked closely with a small team of developers engaged in rapid prototyping.
  • Ported an existing code-base to a non-Oracle platform using Berkeley DB.
  • Designed and implemented a web-based information retrieval system with new algorithms for document indexing, searching and summarization using Berkeley DB, JSPs, servlets and Cocoon (an XML/XSLT based framework) running under Tomcat. Extensive use was made of all the Apache Jakarta packages including Xalan and Xerces.
  • Designed and conducted experiments to test the accuracy, performance and usability of the resulting system.
  • Installed and maintained a small cluster of Linux servers running Apache Tomcat with Cocoon.
  • Presented work done at NavigationZone and in my PhD at various international conferences including BNCOD 2004, SCAM 2003, WWW10 and LA-Web.

I left when the company failed to secure the second-stage capital needed to continue.

Java Developer - University College London (May 1999-October 2000)

As one of three members of UCL's computer science department working on Malted (Multimedia Authoring for Language Tutors and Educational Development) and during a short consultancy period at the UCL Language Centre, I:

  • Developed sections of the asset base software – in particular those concerned with XML and metadata processing, security and access control. All the software was written in Java with JDBC used for database access and open-source Jakarta packages used to manipulate the XML data.
  • Collaborated in database design decisions and wrote appropriate SQL scripts to create the Oracle schema.
  • Worked closely with a small team of developers on fixed timescales.
  • Engaged in pair programming to assist with code integration.
  • Travelled to the sites of European collaborators to present results, demonstrate new prototypes, discuss technical and pedagogic issues and install the developed software.
  • Installed and maintained Linux servers (Red Hat) running Oracle.
  • Provided technical supervision for MSc students working on related activities.
  • Provided training to system administrators responsible for long-term maintenance.

I left at the end of the contract, with the Asset base completed.

References

Angela Sasse, Professor of Human Centred Technology, UCL Department of Computer Science.

Mark Levene, Professor of Computer Science, Birkbeck University of London.

Simon Hargreaves, former Design Manager, Geoquip Worldwide Ltd.

Paul Bates, Design Manager, Geoquip Worldwide Ltd.

Personal Interests

My interests include reading, chess, go, SCUBA diving, music, football and travel. I regularly play on-line chess and go. I am a certified open water diver with over 50 dives around the world. I play keyboards, piano and electric guitar rather badly.

Publications and Technical Reports

The title of my PhD thesis title was “A Web of Trails” (an allusion to Vannevar’s 1945 paper “As We May Think”) and was concerned with the development of a search and navigation engine producing lists of trails to replace the conventional list of single pages.

 

I have presented three peer-reviewed papers at conferences and two at workshops. I have also co-authored a journal paper, a technical report and a book chapter and presented two posters at conferences. A full list of publications is available at http://www.rswheeldon.com/pubs/