Oliver Backhouse
Software Engineer at Quantinuum
United Kingdom
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolOliver Backhouse is a software engineer with eight years’ experience at the intersection of scientific computing and quantum chemistry, currently contributing to Quantinuum. He has a strong track record of implementing electronic-structure algorithms—adding MP2 Laplace-transform references, ADC(2) ionization/excitation routines, and Davidson eigensolvers—in prominent open-source projects like psi4/psi4numpy and pyscf. His PhD reframed Green’s function perturbation theory into a dynamics-from-statics perspective, pairing deep theoretical insight with practical code contributions to density fitting and self-energy modules. Comfortable moving between research and production, he has also applied data-science skills in industry and brings hands-on familiarity with both algorithm design and high-quality scientific software engineering.
8 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
MChem, Chemistry, MChem, Chemistry at The University of Manchester
Stackoverflow
160reputation
624reached
1answer
5questions
Github Skills (13)
mpeg10
quantum-chemistry10
p210
computational-chemistry10
numerical-methods10
python10
linear-algebra10
numpy10
scipy9
computational-physics9
ctypes6
assert6
dynamic6
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
psi4/psi4numpy
Mar 2020 - Mar 2022
Combining Psi4 and Numpy for education and development.
Role in this project:
Software Developer (focused on scientific computing)
Software Developer (focused on scientific computing)Contributions:7 reviews, 17 commits, 4 PRs in 2 years
Contributions summary:Oliver primarily contributed to the development and implementation of computational chemistry algorithms within the psi4numpy repository. Their work included adding a reference implementation of MP2 using the Laplace transformation, correcting amplitude contraction steps, and providing various ADC(2) implementations for ionization potentials, electron affinities, and electronic excitations. The user also developed an `adc_helper` module providing a Davidson routine for eigenvalue calculations.
pythonnumpypsipsi4scipy
pyscf/pyscf
Sep 2020 - Dec 2021
Python module for quantum chemistry
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:133 commits, 5 PRs, 34 comments in 1 year 3 months
Contributions summary:Oliver's commits primarily involve the development and implementation of classes and functions within the `pyscf/agf2` module. Their work focused on adding features to define auxiliary spaces and implement a series of functions related to self-energy calculations. They also contributed to the development of functions and structures involved in density fitting. The primary focus of their work is to provide features relevant to the AGF2 code.
pythonchemistryquantum-computingpython-modulequantum-chemistry
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