Brian Thorne

Thanks for taking a look! Here you can learn a small bit about me, see some of my prior projects and get in contact with me.

History

git log --graph

CSIRO's Data61

First as a Senior Software Engineer and then as the Confidential Computing Team Leader I've spent years at Data61 helping research have a greater impact in the real world. Specifically focused on the development of new privacy preserving technology. As is often the case in small teams I had to take on a number of roles from software developer, devops, tech lead, and including elements of project and product management.

I've been with the N1 Analytics project from the start. I've authored and contributed to several open source projects on github.com/n1analytics including implementations of the Paillier partially homomorphic cryptosystem. I set up, maintain and run the projects Kubernetes cluster. I've deployed our software on-site with customers around the world.

NICTA

Exciting work on cutting edge technology as a Research Engineer at National ICT Australia.

Finding new applications at the intersection of Cryptography and Machine Learning.
Applied machine learning and optimization to port and container logistics.

Dynamic Controls

At Dynamic Controls my role was a Systems Engineer in the Architecture team. Primarily I acted as liaison between Product Management and the Software & Hardware Engineering teams.

I spent time working closely with the Software Engineering team, including writing embedded C code for the medical devices. A core component of my work was interacting with the marketing department and turning their ideas into prototypes and firm engineering specifications.

During my three years at Dynamic controls I ran four courses over ten weeks each, teaching Python to other engineers and colleagues. I also petitioned the senior executive to allow the running of an "Innovation Day", where all engineers could work on novel projects for an entire day. This day was very successful and was run numerous times before I left. These two projects led to an internal award for "Innovation and Excellence".

Before taking a full time position at Dynamic I worked as a summer intern. I led the development of a modeling and simulation framework to allow the Systems & Software engineering teams to model, simulate and monitor complex interactions between components on a controller area network (CAN) running a proprietary electric vehicle protocol. This work led to a "Graduate of the Year" award. Two public highlights were minor contributions to the Linux Kernel, and open sourcing my work in wrapping CAN hardware for Python in python-can.

You might be looking at the static version of this cv; if you want to see the interactive version head over to brian.thorne.link

Papers and Talks

Secure Evaluation Protocol for Personalized Medicine (Workshop on Genome Privacy, Amsterdam, Netherlands) Publication URL
"Stuff you never knew you could do with a socket" talk at Kiwi Pycon 2012 (video, code/examples, blog post )
ScipySim: Towards Distributed Heterogeneous System Simulation for the SciPy Platform (paper at TMS/DEVS 2011) pdf
Comparing the performance of C and Python for Computer Vision (paper at NZCSRSC 2010)
Introduction to Computer Vision in Python (talk at Kiwi Pycon 2009) (presentation, published paper)

Projects

See my various public projects on bitbucket, and github.

I've contributed to the core Python code base in C and in Python. I've also contributed documentation to the linux kernel for Controller Area Network support.

Professional Projects

Innovation Day - I organized a very successful bi-annual day for all the engineers at Dynamic Controls to have a full day of working on innovation projects.
python-can - A library for talking the low level controller area networking protocol. I personally worked on, supervised interns working on, and open sourced the python-can project.
Test bench design for wheelchair and scooter load testing. Including live web monitoring via websockets. Wrote custom C interrupts for embedded lua to interface hardware and software.
New battery gauge algorithm for powered electric vehicles. Analysis, prototyping (js and python), developed and wrote the systems requirements and software specification documents and conducted product testing.
Specified, prototyped and then implemented in embedded C the core drive algorithm for a powered wheelchair product range released in 2012
SARBOT - Wrote Java code to operate a Qwerk powered robot in a semester long Search and Rescue project - also wrote Matlab code to carry out the computer vision component.
Scipy-Simulator - Summer research scholarship investigating graphical models using python. Project description.
Gaze tracking with the OpenEyes library while at HitLabNZ.
Ported the Matlab Fixed Point Toolbox to Python (while working at Tait Electronics) as part of a detailed analysis of Matlab and Python for use in digital signal processing.

Personal Projects

Pyscheme - A very (very) basic scheme interpreter. Inspired by Peter Norvig's tutorial, I used the BiwaScheme Interpreter found at repl.it as my reference implementation.
Open Allure Dialog System - Computer Vision based navigation system for Python.
Pycam - a Pygame module for computer vision
Mailite - a lightweight mailing list and email forwarding program
eptidy - TV Episode Tidier, a program to flexibly organise digitally stored TV episodes.

Points of interest

In partnership with a search and rescue instructor I founded VirtualSar.
I joined a Christchurch based startup Party Sense which collaboratively create Spotify playlists and provide track popularity analysis to djs freely available at partysen.se As lead developer I designed and implemented the entire web-based application in Django and angular-js.
I've taught multiple Python courses at Dynamic Controls for other engineers. This lead to receiving an internal award:
for innovation and building of organisational talent to enable the creation and application of Python based solutions that enhance our way of working
I was a Java tutor in 2009 and a Python tutor in 2010 with the Computer Science department at the University of Canterbury.
Designed and edited a magazine for the kayaking club in Christchurch, New Zealand
Canterbury University Tramping Club Captain '09, and President in 2010
University of Canterbury Canoe Club (UCCC) President from 2010 - 2013

Referees

Charlotte Walshe Chief Executive Officer, Dynamic Controls Phone/email details available on request	As the CEO I didn't have much day to day interaction with Charlotte although I successfully pitched the idea of holding an Innovation Day to her.
Jeremy Reece Product Manager, Dynamic Controls W: (03) 963 9255 M: 027 365 1900 jreece@dynamiccontrols.com	For the majority of my time at Dynamic Controls Jeremy has managed the Systems Functional team. While I was an intern he was also my supervisor. Now Jeremy is part of the product management team that I regularly interact with to clarify marketing requirements into specifications.
Brett Olsen Project Manager, Dynamic Controls bolsen@dynamiccontrols.com	I've worked with Mr Olsen over the last few years at Dynamic Controls. He currently manages my cross functional team of Software Developers, Systems Engineers, and Test Engineers.
Richard Lobb Computer Science Lecturer, University of Canterbury richard.lobb@canterbury.ac.nz	Dr Lobb first introduced me to programming when I arrived at university; in my final years he taught a class that I tutored. I worked as a developer with Dr Lobb to create an automarker a program that would unit test hundreds of students programming assignments and email feedback.
Allan McInnes Software Engineering Lecturer, University of Canterbury	Dr McInnes supervised me for a summer internship to develop a distributed heterogeneous system simulation capability for the SciPy scientific computing platform. I worked remotely for a month from Los Angeles.