Fergus Cooper
Principal Research Software Engineer at University of Oxford
Oxford, England, United Kingdom
Summary
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Top SchoolFergus Cooper is a Principal Research Software Engineer at the University of Oxford with 12 years’ experience bridging computational research and robust software practice. He co-founded the Oxford RSE group in 2018 and now leads its training program, ensuring researchers gain practical software-engineering skills alongside project delivery. Trained as a DPhil computational biologist, he has applied C++ and Python to multi-scale simulation projects like Chaste and statistical genetics tools in PalamaraLab, contributing to high-profile publications and BBSRC-funded work. An advocate for professionalising research software, he served as a trustee of the Society of Research Software Engineering and helps define RSE training pathways through UNIVERSE-HPC and the Gutenberg teaching platform. Fergus is also an active open-source contributor—recently improving PyBaMM’s operator functionality and test coverage—demonstrating a focus on clean design and reproducible science.
12 years of coding experience
5 years of employment as a software developer
DPhil, Computational Biology, DPhil, Computational Biology at University of OxfordMMath, Mathematics, First Class, MMath, Mathematics, First Class at University of Warwick
Stackoverflow
161reputation
3kreached
2answers
2questions
Github Skills (8)
unit-testing10
python10
maps6
destructor6
data-structures6
exceptions6
rectangles6
overriding6
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
pybamm-team/PyBaMM
Jan 2019 - Feb 2019
Fast and flexible physics-based battery models in Python
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:2 reviews, 14 commits, 1 PR in 16 days
Contributions summary:Fergus contributed to the development of a new unary operator, specifically the "Function" operator, within the pybamm library. This involved modifying existing files, including `__init__.py` and `unary_operators.py`, to integrate the new functionality. The user also wrote and modified unit tests to ensure the correct behavior of the new operator, demonstrating a focus on code quality. Furthermore, the user addressed variable naming and refactoring tasks within the codebase.
chemical-engineeringphysicspower-systemspythonbattery
fcooper8472/useful_scripts
Dec 2016 - Mar 2020
Contributions:50 pushes, 1 branch in 3 years 4 months
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