Conor Macbride
Data Scientist
Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolConor Macbride is a data scientist and solar physics PhD candidate with nine years' experience applying mathematical modelling and machine learning to real-world problems. A first-class MPhys in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from St Andrews, he blends academic research at Queen’s University Belfast with industry data science at Allstate Northern Ireland. He contributes to prominent open-source astronomy projects—improving test automation in astropy and enhancing SunPy’s plotting and documentation—demonstrating strong QA and full-stack development skills. Comfortable coding in Python, Fortran and the Wolfram Language, he also automates CI workflows and maintains matplotlib’s testing plugin, reflecting a focus on reproducible research and robust tooling. Outside research, he co-founded an award-winning science podcast and edits web content for scientific organisations, pairing technical depth with clear science communication.
9 years of coding experience
MPhys (Hons), MPhys (Hons) at University of St AndrewsDoctor of Philosophy - PhD, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD at Queen's University Belfast
French, English
Github Skills (9)
astropy10
pytest10
python10
astrophysics10
astronomy10
documentation10
matplotlib10
testing10
solar9
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
sunpy/sunpy
Dec 2020 - Jan 2023
SunPy - Python for Solar Physics
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:198 reviews, 214 commits, 88 PRs in 2 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Conor primarily focused on improving documentation, fixing broken links, and adding changelog entries to reflect the changes made. They also contributed to the codebase by manually inheriting a class docstring and renaming a keyword, indicating work on code structure and potentially data handling. Furthermore, they enhanced the plotting capabilities by supporting customization of line colors and styles within composite maps and added new tests.
physicspythonsolarsimulationpython-3
astropy/astropy
Aug 2021 - Oct 2022
Astronomy and astrophysics core library
Role in this project:QA Engineer / Test Automation Engineer
QA Engineer / Test Automation EngineerContributions:9 reviews, 12 commits, 5 PRs in 1 year 2 months
Contributions summary:Conor primarily focused on adding and improving tests for the `astropy` library. Their contributions included adding regression tests to ensure correct behavior, particularly for handling edge cases in the `io.fits` module. They also updated existing tests, demonstrating a commitment to maintaining code quality and addressing potential bugs related to header and data handling in the FITS file format. Furthermore, the user added tests related to data diffing capabilities.
astrologypythonscienceastrophysicsastrodynamics
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