Hello! I'm Steve and, rather obviously, this is my blog.
Professionally, I spent my early career studying science and working in scientific research. I trained as a chemist, generalised to study nanoscale science, and continued to hedge my bets by completing a PhD studying the physical chemistry of bio-inspired materials.
Later, spotting the increasing number of exciting opportunities to work in software solving data problems, I switched careers to computing. That turned out to be a good decision!
I've worked for The Sensible Code Company for several years and, for the last few, entirely remotely. As of 2021, I'm still helping at Sensible Code part-time. The other part of my working week is spent as a software developer at The Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford. This was an unexpected move. But I'm happy to have gone full circle back to university to help others use data in their health research.
This blog contains a lot of what I've published publicly, but I've also got work elsewhere too. Here's a list of where you can find more of my work and writing.
Open source contributions
See my GitHub profile. I have a few of my own projects and have contributed to other open source projects.
Technology blogs
The Sensible Code Company blog
This post is one I wrote on why the company's using Go to develop their current main product, Cantabular. Cantabular is a statistical publication tool with privacy features; the UK's Office for National Statistics is intending to use it for publishing Census 2021 data.
ScraperWiki blog
The Sensible Code Company used to be ScraperWiki before they rebranded in 2016. I wrote several posts for ScraperWiki's blog.
DJ TechTools
At DJ TechTools, a major site and community for DJs, I wrote a number of posts as a freelance contributor.
Technology articles
I was a co-author of the following:
- "Software development skills for health data researchers" (BMJ Health & Care Informatics, 2022)
- "A Simple API to the KnowledgeStore" (International Semantic Web Conference Developers Workshop conference proceedings paper, 2014)
Scientific work
PhD thesis
"Design and characterisation of functionalised self-assembled peptide nanostructures"
Scientific articles
I've been a co-author of several peer-reviewed scientific articles; for several of these, I was first author.
- "Peptide strand length controls the energetics of self‐assembly and morphology of β‐sheet fibrils" (Peptide Science, 2018)
- "Biomimetic self-assembling peptides as scaffolds for soft tissue engineering (Nanomedicine, 2013, first author)
- "De novo designed positively charged tape-forming peptides: self-assembly and gelation in physiological solutions and their evaluation as 3D matrices for cell growth" (Soft Matter, 2011, first author)
- "Peptide Synthesis and Self-Assembly" (Chapter in Peptide-Based Materials, part of the Topics in Current Chemistry book series, 2011, first author)
- "Interaction of Self-Assembling β-Sheet Peptides with Phospholipid Monolayers: The Role of Aggregation State, Polarity, Charge and Applied Field" (Langmuir, 2009)
Presentations
I've given talks on scientific research, career changes and technology.
List to be added!
Have a question or comment?
You can email using the address below:
blog(replace these parentheses and everything inside with an at sign here)stevenmaude.co.uk