bildungsroman
/ˈbɪldʊŋzrəʊˌmɑːn/
n.
A novel whose principal subject is the moral, psychological, and intellectual development of a usually youthful main character.
From German, bildung, formation, education + roman, novel.
(For the novella version, have a look at my CV)
Teaching Experience
Statistical information theory, Department of Computing
Oct 2023 - present
Teaching Assistant
Developing the practical coding side of the tutorials in the form of Python notebooks with coding and decoding challenges, as well as participating in tutorials.
Supervisors: Dr Pedro Mediano
Ethics, Privacy, AI in society, Department of Computing
Jan 2023 - present
Teaching Assistant
Helping students with tutorials in Python on AI fairness.
Supervisors: Dr Novi Quadrianto, Prof Michael Huth
Complexity & Networks, Department of Physics
Jan 2021 - present
Lab demonstrator
Helping students with Python-based simulations of the Oslo sandpile model and Barabasi-Albert network model.
Supervisors: Prof Kim Christensen, Dr Tim Evans
Cryptography Engineering, Department of Computing
Jan 2021 - present
Teaching Assistant
Participating in (and occasionally running) tutorials. Creating Jupyter notebooks with practical exercises and examples of cryptographic protocols, as well as the history of cryptography.
Supervisor: Prof Michael Huth
Net & Web Security, Department of Computing
Jan 2021 - Apr 2021
Teaching Assistant
Answering students’ questions on course content during tutorials.
Supervisor: Dr Sergio Maffeis
work experience
Imperial College London
Feb 2021 - present
PhD Student Teaching Assistant
Supporting lectures and tutorials, creating study materials for courses in the departments of computing & physics.
Netcraft
Oct 2017 - Feb 2020
Internet services developer
Started with content filtering, then moved on to phishing site detection on the
web or social platforms, automated security examination of networks, and automated countermeasures against
internet fraud. Sometimes I would follow up where the automated systems were limited, doing detective work
to track down institutions or people all over the internet in order to let them know their website has been compromised.
I have also run the Netcraft Web Server Survey, which collects comprehensive statistics about websites and hosts on the internet, and lead the redesign of the website.
Freelance
2017 - Present
Software engineering & Cybersecurity consultant
Advising SMEs on privacy, security policy and cyber-attack mitigation, malware detection and attack tracking. Forensics. Collaboration with consultancy firm Remora.
Custom software development and quantitative research.
King’s Clinical Trials Unit
Dec 2014 - Dec 2016
Junior Clinical Software Analyst
I started by designing and building the website, then progressed to test, debug, and develop applications for clinical trials data collection and automatically randomising treatment assigned to patients to maximise statistical power of the trial. Here I completed Good Clinical Practice training, received an accreditation for .NET Development and learned iOS development in Swift. Some of the most intriguing technical tasks I tackled here were reverse engineering and low-level operating system management in Windows.
My work in clinical trials, especially focusing on mental health, have stimulated my interest in neuroscience and psychiatric research. During this time I have become acquainted with the Maudsley Psychedelic Society and have attended most of their meetings.
Supervisor: Dr Evangelos Georgiou
Imperial College Verified Software Group
Aug 2015 - Oct 2015
Undergraduate Researcher
Investigated methods of reasoning about concurrent data structures with an innovative new program logic for Time and Data Abstraction (TaDA) and created a technical specification of Red-Black Trees which guarantees correct concurrent behaviour. Also implemented a prototype of such a concurrent data structure in Haskell.
Supervisors: Dr Philippa Gardner, Dr Julian Sutherland
Google Munchen
Jun 2014 - Sep 2014
Software Engineering Intern
Front-end and back-end development for user settings in Java using dependency injection.
AWARDS & GRANTS
Oct 2020 - Oct 2024
Splunk Scholar — PhD Scholarship
Awarded a grant to pursue a PhD programme in the Department of Computing at Imperial College.
Jul 2018
SnowWall — HutZero finalist
Incubator for cyber-security startups, part of a UK Government-funded cyber-security programme.
Jun 2017
SnowWall— Imperial College London Distinction
Presenting at the Department of Computing Distinguished Projects Gala keynote presentation to more than 300 staff, members of the public, and school students.
Feb 2017
1st prize - InterAce Cybersecurity Challenge
A cyber-security competition between the UK’s Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber-Security, sponsored by the Cabinet Office and GCHQ.
May 2013
Computational Morality — ICL Corporate Partnership Prize
Awarded Best Project in its category, Best Presentation and Best Website.
Education
Centre for Complexity Science, Imperial College London
2020 - present
PhD Complexity Science
Exploring the emergence of self-organised collective behaviour at multiple scales using tools from complexity science, information theory, neuroscience and psychedelic science, signal processing, network science, statistical mechanics, and computer science. Building hardware for experiments as well as simulations. Multiple interdisciplinary collaborations with musicians, neuroscientists, psychologists and social scientists.
Supervisors: Prof Henrik J. Jensen, Prof William J. Knottenbelt, Dr Fernando E. Rosas
Department of Computing, Imperial College London
2016 - 2017
MEng Computing (distinction)
Investigating the relationship between the internet’s architecture, firewalls, and privacy, and building a tool in C# which communicates with the Windows networking interfaces to allow users to visualise and manage the flow of outbound data. The project was awarded a distinction by Imperial College, was presented at the London Met Cybercrime Unit, and was a finalist of HutZero 2018, a cyber-security start-up incubator. It was also used, successfully, to catch the bad guys - more than once!
Supervisor: Prof William J. Knottenbelt
Thesis: “SnowWall: A visual firewall for the surveillance society” [link]
Courses & interests:
- Computing: Computational Neuroscience, Information Theory & Codes, Cryptography Engineering, Networks & Communication, Net & Web Security, Privacy Enhancing Techniques, Software Reliability, Models of Computation, Functional Programming, Natual Language Processing
- Humanities: Philosophy of Science, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Mind
Theodor Burada Arts and Crafts School, Constanta, Romania
2010 - 2012
Professional Diploma in Photography
Thesis: “The Symbolic and Psychological Use of Colour in Photography” (Psihologia si simbolismul culorii in fotografie)
Exhibition: Constanta Expo, June 2012.
Ovidius High School, Constanta, Romania
2009 - 2013
Baccalaureate 9.61/10 GPA (Maths, Computing, Literature & English)
Participated in local and national competitions:
- County Informatics Olympiad 2011 (OJI) - First Prize
- National Applied Informatics Contest 2011 (CIA) - Ranked #6
- County Mathematics Olympiad 2010 (OJM) - Second prize
- National Physics Olympiad 2009 (ONF) - Ranked #12