Andy Turner
- Position
- Research Software Engineer
- Areas of expertise
- Environmental Digital Twins; Computational Reproducibility; GeoComputation; Computer programming and workflow automation; Web Services; Exploratory Data Analysis; Data Visualisation, Analysis and Modelling; Knowledge Engineering; Neural Networks; Genetic Algoithms; Fuzzy Inference; Geographical Information Systems; Risk.
Andy has additional expertise to those listed in: collaboration and collaborative platforms including GitHub and the development and utilisation of Virtual Research Environments; software sustainability; High Performance Computing (HPC) and distributed Grid and Cloud Computing. Andy is most familiar with Java, Python and JavaScript/TypeScript programming languages, advocates for software sustainability and has published Java libraries on Maven Central. He is familiar with the use, syntax and evolution of numerous other programming languages including: Fortran, R, C, C++, Ruby, Julia, Rust and Ruby. Andy also has expertise in infrastructure and organisation sustainability, (sensitive) research data management and research integrity, and is an accomplished trainer and live coder (that follows software carpentries recommendations), experienced in the delivery of training courses for: novice, intermediate and expert programmers; and users of HPC systems and scientific software.
Andy has a wide range of academic interests and as a scholar has studied computability and unsolvability from theoretical and applied perspectives. He is generally interested in mathematics, particularly geometry and Bayesian statistics, but is most specialised in computational geography - a field of GeoComputation focused on the application of the computational paradigm to geographical problems. With general interests in science and the world around us, Andy enjoys art forms, and reading about our world and to try to make sense of our universe.
Andy joined the team in June 2023 as a transfer from the School of Geography (SoG) where he specialised in geographical information systems and computational geography for over 25 years as a research officer. For SoG, Andy: taught on masters and undergraduate programmes, tutored and supervised research postgraduates; acted as deputy director of the Centre for Computational Geography; was a member of all SoG research clusters; reviewed for University Research Ethics Committee; acted as a Library and IT contact; was a member of the SoG Equity Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) group called the GeoInclusive Taskforce; and, helped the faculty level EDI group with Athena Swan.