Overview

• Born 2 October, 1978, in Carnarvon on the Gascoyne River, citizen of Australia by birth and Éire by descent.
• Studied as a big-iron Unix programmer and very applied mathematician at Griffith University in Brisbane, pursued a mixture of further study and contract programming in an arc from Brisbane to Darwin, many years as a migratory research software engineer and odd-jobs man around the University of Queensland, this year a software developer at the data end of the ARDC.
• Plays far too much go, reads speculative fiction in industrial quantities, tests out as a Jung-Meyer-Briggs INTJ, is a practicing Roman Catholic, qualified for Australian Mensa by standardised testing at the 99th percentile in June 2003, but mostly it doesn't show. Wants to be free to hack on interesting mathematically-solvable problems and code useful software, and also, have more time to read.
• Erdős number at most 5 (via Sun Chengzheng, Yang Liu, Jian Liang Wu, Henry A Kierstead), ORCID 0000-0003-0158-6931.

Programming Skills

• Speaks eloquent Python and PHP, fluent Javascript, SQL, bash, rusty C, Go, Rust, Java, Haskell, VBA, FORTRAN 95 and Matlab, pidgin FORTRAN 77, Prolog, C++, Perl 5, TeX. Prefers Haskell or Python but will code in anything. Mostly command-line or browser interface, has built GUIs at need.
• Has used the standard Python, PHP, and C bindings for MySQL, MongoDB, and SQLite to write applications and scripts, can write raw queries to taste.
• Knows how and why to use source revision control (cvs, svn and git) repository interfaces (Bitbucket, Github, Gitea), issue tracking (Jira, Trac, Bitbucket and RT) and documentation wikis (MediaWiki, Trac, Confluence).
• Can reason about and implement various forms of distributed computation, from threads through cooperating processes to MIMD in-cluster parallel processing to WAN-scale clouds. Classically trained computer scientist, which means the reasoning about correctness and consistency and performance will be correct. Skills in respect of numerical methods on all of the above are rusty but present.
• Can run the entire SDLC from scoping through requirements elicitation, design, implementation, testing, integration, deployment, and maintenance, collaboratively or autonomously. Initially trained on the PMBOK but have since learnt to be iterative, agile, secure, distributed, and all permutations thereof. Largest development team to date, three.
• Has mapped and analysed spatial data with ArcGIS, especially the Spatial Analyst toolbox and scripting with the Python API, and processed satellite and aerial imagery with ENVI.
• Writes fluent HTML and CSS. Has built web applications out of Python (CherryPy and Flask), PHP (raw, as Wordpress plugins, as Drupal modules, or as CodeIgniter|Symfony models/views/controllers), Javascript (client-side JQuery), Java (applets, servlets, raw Tomcat and Springboot), and occasionally Perl. Familiar with Drupal and Wordpress and has built and maintained sites in both.

System Administration And Operations Skills

• Familiar with the Unix command line; can get work done in most POSIX-compliant environments.
• Has built and maintained servers and workstations out of multiple dialects of Unix (including RHEL, CentOS, Arch Linux, Ubuntu Linux, Solaris and OS X). Can install and administer HTTPS, SMTP, and NTP daemons to taste.
• Can configure routing, ARP, DHCP and DNS for middle-sized networks; speaks enough IOS to wrangle Cisco routers, can build network appliances (firewalls, routers, NAT and VPN endpoints) out of Linux, Ethernet cards, stringybark and greenhide.
• Can administer and tune MySQL and PostgreSQL on the Unix command line, MongoDB on Unix via Javascript and Python command lines, sqlite3 on Unix via shell and Python command lines.
• Has built Linux and Unix hosts on bare metal and in virtualization, mostly Openstack for production NeCTAR, and KVM, Virtualbox and VMWare ESX for other projects.
• Can make and use container images from software with docker(-compose) and podman(-compose) and run them on Ubuntu, RHEL and Rocky Linux, and configure networking and security within and across container hosts.
• Has done first-tier, second-tier and third-tier software and hardware support for users presenting in person at a helpdesk, over the phone to a formal support line, and by email. Groks the concept of appropriate escalation and the limits of SOEs and SLAs. Experienced with the Freshdesk, Zendesk, Oracle Service Cloud and Request Tracker ticket platforms.

Other Skills

• Has, and has used applied mathematics and statistics knowledge, by hand and with Matlab, NumPy, C, R, Mathematica, FORTRAN.
• Has acquired, en passant, and can use sundry high school general chemistry and biology, undergraduate physics, and basic soil and water lab chemistry.
• Holds a current Queensland class C license (manual and automatic under 4.5t).
• Knows when and how to provide first aid, holds current St John's senior and remote first aid certifications.
• Speaks the Brisbane dialect of Auslan as a second language.
• Plays go at single digit kyu strength and can teach double-digit kyu players.
• Can teach and assess small groups; has taught Java, C, Python, discrete and continuous mathematics as lecturer, guest lecturer, demonstrator and tutor to Australian undergraduates, has run random introduction-to-this-software-or-service sessions with too many users to list. Largest teaching team led to date, two tutors and two markers.
• Can engage with the scholarly literature (has reviewed for several CS conferences, and the IEEE magazine Distributed Systems Online), writes a mean literature review and has first or second authorship of some conference papers.
• Can do the clerical work of an Australian university research group (proofreading, filing, shelving, stores, OH&S as a trained WHSR and fire warden, mail, data entry, sample curation, logistics), collaboratively or autonomously.
• Can run small voluntary associations (organise events and tournaments and the catering and venues thereof, run and constructively participate in committee and general meetings, keep correct records and report from them, write and debug group constitutions, write budgets and disburse or procure according to them, handle petty cash and banking, recruit and manage volunteers, build and maintain group social media) collaboratively or autonomously.
• Familiar with Microsoft Windows and can if required configure and administer workstation and server instances of same including Active Directory and SMB domains.
• Can create and work with presentations, spreadsheets, and other documents with Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, TeX, iWork, Inkscape, and Adobe Creative Suite and Cloud.

Education

• February 2025 - (estimated) December 2028 Bachelor of Science, University of Southern Queensland, School of Mathematics, Physics and Computing.
  • Major in applied mathematics, study part time during full time work.
  • Refresh of the degree done during the nineties, with an eye to focusing down on alignment in software-assisted cognition.
• July 2006 - May 2011 Doctoral candidate, Centre for Water in the Minerals Industry and School of Earth Sciences, University of Queensland.
  • Studying the hydrogeochemical dynamics of salt on North Bowen Basin coal mines.
  • Data sources: hand-digitized point soil observations, hyperspectral aerial imagery, open and proprietary topographical and land use spatial data sets, and a lot of process chemistry time series.
  • Full-time candidature on APA(I) scholarship until December 2009.
  • Part-time candidature from January 2010 to March 2010.
  • Leave of absence from March 2010 until resignation of candidature in May 2011.
• January 2001 - April 2005 Doctoral candidate, School of Information and Computing Technology, Griffith University.
  • Studied the application of operational transformation control algorithms in the Access Grid collaboratory context.
  • Full-time candidature on full scholarship until January 2004.
  • Part-time candidature from then until withdrawal to take up a position at UQ.
• February 2000 - November 2000 Bachelor of Information Technology with Honours (First Class), Griffith University.
  • Wrote a message-passing framework for eventual consistency maintenance between Matlab instances using Remote Method Invocation and the Matlab Java API. Documented it for the honours thesis.
  • Coursework in advanced functional programming, parallel and distributed programming, and numerical methods.
  • Griffith Award for Academic Excellence, 2000.
• February 1996 - November 1999 Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Information Technology (Mathematics and Supercomputing), Griffith University.
  • Majors in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Physics, Computer Science, Supercomputing.
  • Weighted grade point average of 6.3.
  • Final-year project was porting the Genehunter maximum-likelihood genomic analysis code onto the QCIF supercomputing cluster using MPI.
  • Summer studentship before Semester I, 1999 at School of Mathematics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Evaluated an experimental variant of Galerkin's method for preconditioning matrix equations linearised from Laplace's equation, written in MATLAB on a SunOS box, for Dr William McLean.
  • Griffith Award for Academic Excellence, 1998.
  • Graduated with 1999 Bachelor's Medal in Applied Mathematics.
  • Qualified for and accepted membership Golden Key Honour Society on graduation in 1999.
• February 1994 - December 1995 Grade 11 and 12 secondary schooling, Southern Cross Catholic College, Redcliffe.
  • Queensland Senior Certificate amounting to ATAR 98.85 (overall position 1 and FP 1 in fields B,C,D).

Employment

• January 2023 - Present Software Developer, National Information Infrastructure
  • Services Unit, Australian Research Data Commons, Brisbane, Australia
  • Programmer analyst reporting to Liz Woods, based at University of Queensland Saint Lucia, working remotely with the rest of the NII Dev-Ops team based at Australian National University in Canberra.
  • Platform hacker and toolsmith around the ARDC's data publishing services and national information infrastructure: RedHat (Rocky) Linux on Nectar (Openstack) compute instances. Wrangling maven and yarn and npm build toolchains, JSON API endpoints and testing with Postman, and podman-based containerisation and orchestration.
  • Principal project: Research Vocabularies Australia service, legacy production service and next-generation code rewrite.
  • Previous projects: the ARDC respin of CSIRO's OntoServer controlled ontology system and Snapagogo fork of the snap2snomed visual ontology browsing and mapping tool, and how to integrate these into the ARDC's other platforms and services.
• April 2022 - December 2022 Research Assistant in Cryptography and Computational Complexity
  • School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
  • Research assistant to Dr Veronika Kuchta
  • Programmer implementing post-quantum cryptography algorithms to see what they'd do in the proof-of-stake context.
• August 2017 - April 2022 QRISCloud Systems Engineer
  • Research Computing Centre, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
  • Assisting in the systems engineering and operations of the Queensland Research Cloud computing and storage resources, including OpenStack federated cloud compute infrastructure and petabyte scale storage systems.
  • Fielding tickets for the Queensland Research Cloud, as itself and as a node of the Australian National Research Cloud and answering support requests and queries for both.
  • Other RCC staff duties as required (logistics, WHS).
• April 2012 - April 2017 Systems programmer
  • School of Business, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
  • System programming and system administration for Linux hosts run by the School (RHEL and Centos and then Oracle Linux).
  • Maintained, upgraded and extended the school's User Management System in PHP (CodeIgniter) + Javascript (JQuery{-UI}) persisting to MySQL and MongoDB.
  • Technical lead for the school's Expenditure Management System (front end for UniFI purchasing with integration into Request Tracker) in PHP (CodeIgniter) + Javascript (JQuery) over MongoDB.
  • Likewise for the school's Assessment Viewing Session Registration, Online Academic Portfolio of Achievement, and other similar systems.
  • Technical lead and administrator for the school's SugarCRM instances.
  • Much extract-transform-and-load Python scripting to synchronise UQ student, staff and alumni data into the school SugarCRM instance.
  • Built and administered MongoDB nodes for the school's production web applications.
  • Python scripting to feed espace.library.uq.edu.au and researchers.uq.edu.au data into the User Management System.
  • Ad hoc reporting scripts for all of the above (usually in Python).
  • System and application administration for the school's Drupal web sites, including domain name and DNS work.
  • Other duties as required (including user support via email, telephone, relief support at physical helpdesk).
• April 2011 - April 2012 System administrator
  • OBE Beef P/L, Brisbane, Australia
  • Administered, built and maintained Unix servers and Windows workstations at the Brisbane headquarters.
  • Migrated IT and telecommunications for move to new site at Brisbane Airport, including laying out a fresh LAN and all associated infrastructure.
  • Advised and assisted in respect of the corporate web site (Wordpress plus plugins; coordinated with contract designer, application and account administration).
  • Administered and built out Google Apps for Enterprise for core corporate data after decommissioning previous Windows Server 2008 solution.
  • Upgraded resource planning systems, evaluated the business case for each alternative against the commercial context, project-managed implementation of and migration to JCurve dialect of NetSuite (December 2011 to March 2012).
• August 2011 Contract systems analyst and auditor
  • Julalikari Council Aboriginal Corporation, Tennant Creek, Northern Territory, Australia
  • Assessed and reported upon JCAC's network and computing infrastructure.
  • Assessed, reported upon and planned the Yiwaji College's initial network and computing infrastructure at South Barkley campus.
  • Emergency audit and security of JCAC core information systems after abrupt senior personnel turnover.
• February 2011 - April 2012 Help desk officer
  • University of Queensland Library, Brisbane, Australia
  • Rostered shifts on the AskIT help desk at the UQ Central Library, answered online tickets and calls to the telephone help line.
  • Advised and assisted university students with the University's computing resources, including internet access, library and database access, printing, and software.
  • Opened, closed, and supervised the public computing rooms in Duhig Building, including the Assistive Technology Rooms for disabled students.
  • Lent out hardware and room keys using the library circulation systems, and supplied incidental advice and direction as required.
• March 2005 - March 2010 Research assistant
  • Centre for Water in the Minerals Industry, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
  • Full-time principal developer for ACARP project C15001, March 2005 to July 2006, reporting to Professor Chris Moran.
  • Other duties as required (clerical, stores, WHSR, system administration, logistical), June 2005 to June 2006.
  • Part-time sessional appointments for programming and system administration work during full-time study, August 2006 to March 2010.
• February 2000 - June 2005 Odd jobs man.
  • Griffith University,Brisbane, Australia. Schools of Computing, Science and Environmental Science
  • Tutored 1104CIT Programming II and 1108ECS Business Statistics in Semester I, 2004 for Queensland Institute of Business and Technology.
  • Relief lecturer for subjects 1101CIT Discrete Mathematics and 1102CIT Concrete Mathematics in Semester II, 2004 at QIBT.
  • Sessional lecturer and course coordinator for CIT2134 Programming Paradigms and Languages (introduction to Python, Haskell, Prolog and C) at the School of Computing in Semester I, 2001. Revised curriculum completely, lectured it to a class of ~130. Led a teaching team of three tutors/markers, each of us with tutorial sections of ~30 students.
  • Administered the Flying Fish learning management system for coursework in the quantitative disciplines belonging to School of Science, especially first year physics, from Semester I, 2001 to Semester I, 2005, for Professor Evan Gray. Developed assessment and teaching content (first-year physics) in Java applets, CSS1 and DHTML. Performed related support tasks, including occasionally rebuilding the server on Windows NT.
  • Sessional tutor for CIT1102 Programming I under Andrew Rock for Semester I, 2000.
  • Sessional tutor for CIT1504 Programming II under Rodney Topor for Semester II, 2000.
  • Sessional tutor for CIT1101 Discrete Mathematics and Logic under Dr David Billington for Semester I, 2001.
  • Sessional tutor for CIT1102 Concrete Mathematics under Dr David Billington for Semester II, 2001.
  • Coding graph algorithms in Matlab as a summer studentship for Professor Roger Braddock in December of 2000.
  • Porting a parallel version of Genehunter from Griffith University's SP2 parallel computer to QUT's SGI Origin for the Queensland Parallel Supercomputing Foundation under Andrew Lewis in December 1999.
• March 2004 - September 2009 Contract programmer and systems administrator, occasional technical volunteer
  • Remote Rural Resources P/L, Brisbane, Australia
  • Built and maintained a series of web servers, web sites (Drupal and Wordpress), and small-scale network services, including the Pathways to Employment project portal (Wordpress plus custom survey plugin).
  • Other domain and database administration (MySQL on OS X and Linux) as required.
  • Other numerical analysis and short-form prose generation as a subcontractor on consulting work for the Queensland office.
  • Team member for a small community trial of what indigenous kids would do with XO-1 laptops in an unstructured environment, at Pormpur Paanth Child Care Centre, Pormpuraaw, Queensland, Australia, in February 2009. Borrowed half a dozen from the OLPC Friends collective in southern Australia for the purpose. Three days working with local children, teachers of the local school, and the local child care centre.
  • Assessed, audited and reported upon Pormpuraaw community's network and computing infrastructure in February to March 2008 for the Pormpuraaw Aboriginal Shire Council Edward River, Queensland, Australia. Also carried out vocational IT training at Pormpuraaw CDEP.
  • Three days in September 2005 on site at Miwatj Health Aboriginal Corporation in the town of Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia. Putting a moribund and derelict community computer lab in the back room of MHAC back together using Ubuntu Linux, a small team of volunteers, and a lot of elbow grease.
  • Delivered web and server administration training into NT Learnscope project 5548, August to September 2004, at the Maningrida Jobs, Education and Training Aboriginal Corporation at Maningrida in the Northern Territory. This included building MJET a web server and web pages. While in town, resurrected the Maningrida Arts and Culture art database.

Publications

• C.Cote, C.J.Moran, C.Hedemann, H.Davis, N.Silvester, C.Koch and C.Tollari: "Systems Modelling for Water Management in Mining and Minerals - Bowen Basin Coal", Proceedings of the 2006 AusIMM Conference on Water in Mining, Brisbane, Australia, November 2006.
• A.H.Davis, C.Sun and J.Lu: "Generalizing Operational Transformation to the Standard General Markup Language", Proceedings of the 2002 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, New Orleans, November 2002.
• A.H.Davis, C.Sun and J.Lu: "Collaborative Editing of XML Documents: An Operational Transformation Approach", Third annual collaborative editing workshop, 2001 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work, Boulder, Colorado, October 2001.
• A.H.Davis, J.Lu and C.Sun: "Structuring Distributed Computation and Visualization using Facet Trees", Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing, Hong Kong, December 2000.
• A.H.Davis, "Structuring Collaborative Visualization using Facet Trees: Design and Implementation of a Prototype System", honours thesis, School of CIT, Griffith University, Australia, October 2000.

Affiliations and Service

• March 2014 - present Queensland Go Society
  • Member since federation in March 2014, retired from elected state leadership in February 2024.
  • Brisbane (Queensland, Australia) chapter convenor, March 2014 to February 2015: ran a weekly evening meeting at the GO Lounge, venue liaison, directed club tournaments, supported general secretary.
  • General secretary, February 2015 to February 2020: combined the duties of a secretary (logistics and records), treasurer (accounting and banking) and president (public relations, chair, internal diplomacy) of the state federation for the sport of Go. Chaired the state council of the Society, four chapters and counting.
  • General secretary, February 2020 to February 2024: as previous, except actual president elected to hold that portfolio instead of me.
  • Director for the 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 Queensland Go Championship; 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023 Brisbane Spring; 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023 Gold Coast Classic, 2019 and 2023 Cecil Kuo Memorial and 2019, 2020, 2021 Australian Digital tournaments. Also the 2019 and 2024 national championships.
• February 2003 - present Brisbane Go Club, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
  • Currently playing at 1 kyu Australian amateur rank; they don't really do membership so much as people who turn up.
  • Management committee member, February 2005 to March 2013.
  • Club secretary, March 2008 to March 2013. Organised tournaments, other events, and catering thereof, kept meeting minutes and other records, assisted treasurer with bookkeeping and financials, managed club correspondence, organised and report to general meetings of the club, maintained club web pages and social media.
  • Managed incorporation as an association under Queensland law in 2008, compliance and reporting as an IA for five years, and disincorporation in 2013 per vote of the general meeting.
  • Chapter convenor, March 2014 (federation into Queensland Go Society as a chapter) to February 2015. As the secretary, but with much less paperwork due to disincorporation and federation with the QGS.
  • Director for the 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 Queensland Go Championships; 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 Gold Coast Classic; and 2012 MCSQ Cup tournaments.
• February 2003 - present Australian Go Association
  • Regular player member from joining the Brisbane Go Club in 2003, supporting (minor sponsoring) member from 2023, active in national volunteer leadership 2007 to 2018.
  • Management committee member November 2007 to December 2012, December 2014 to June 2018, and national webmaster 2008-2017.
  • National secretary from November 2009 to November 2011. Duties included: writing and receiving correspondence, coordinating the selection of Australian representatives to international tournaments, keeping minutes and other records, organising and reporting to general meetings.
  • National treasurer from November 2011 to December 2012, December 2014 to June 2018. Duties included: tracking association expenditures and income, managing association bank account, moderating association online membership system, reporting to general meetings.
  • Tournament director for the 2011 (Gold Coast), 2015 (Brisbane), and 2018 (Gold Coast) Australian National Go Championships, 2015, 2016 and 2018 Australian Digital tournaments.
• June 2002 - June 2013 Association for Computing Machinery
  • Professional member from 2002 to 2013.
  • Member of ACM SIGGROUP from June 2003 to its termination.
• February 2001 - present Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
  • Professional member of the IEEE, and the Institute's Computer Society since March 2001. Reverted to student member in 2025 on return to study.
  • Served as volunteer editor and reviewer of Distributed Systems Online magazine's collaborative computing area from 2002 to 2005.
  • Served on the editorial board of DS Online from 2004 to 2005.
• January 2000 - April 2005 Griffith University
  • Activist and amateur student politician on Nathan campus in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Worth doing once, would not do again.
  • Represented the postgraduate students of Griffith University as their elected member of the university's governing council between March 2002 and April 2003.
  • Between mid-1999 and February 2004, also served terms as elected or appointed postgraduate member on the Council's Community Service Committee, Academic Committee, Finance and Property Committee, University Appeals Committee, and Research and Postgraduate Studies Committee.
  • Served in the elected leadership of the Griffith University Postgraduate Students Association (the student union) from 2000 to 2005. Communications Officer in 2000 and 2001, Nathan Campus Coordinator in 2002 and 2003, webmaster and emeritus committee member as required.
• June 1997 - April 2005 Peninsula Toastmasters Club 1444-69
  • Region 69 is Queensland, club 1444 is Redcliffe, Queensland, Australia.
  • Earned CTM certification in June 2000 and CL certification in December 2000.
  • Served one term as Sergeant-at-Arms and two terms as Vice-President (Education) January 1999 to December 2002.