CV

Research Interests

My research interests involve using code to solve various physics, biophotonic, or medical problems. With a particular interest in using Monte Carlo radiation transfer techniques to probe light distribution in tissue.

Education

2015 - 2019 - Ph.D. University of St Andrews
Supervised by Dr. Kenny Wood & Prof. Tom Brown
Thesis Title: Advanced 3D Monte Carlo algorithms for biophotonic and medical applications
Projects:

  • Modelling of wave phenomena in Monte Carlo radiative transfer.

  • Simulation of laser tissue ablation.

  • Modelling of tissue autofluorescence for novel biomarkers for cardiovascular disease.

2010 - 2015 - MPhys (Hons) (2:1) University of St Andrews
Dissertation Title: Measurement and simulation of scattering in diffuse media.

Employment History

October 2019 - Present Post-doctoral researcher SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, St Andrews University

  • Translation and optimisation of pre-existing galaxy image analysis code for future application to data from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)

  • Addition of various image analysis routines, expanding the codes ability.

  • Working with LSST:UK so that the code can interface with their data centre.

  • Creation of notebooks to allow public access to science.

January 2020 - Present Post-doctoral researcher School of Computer Science, St Andrews University

  • Creation of an automatic counting algorithm, for the purpose of counting dolphin populations in the Pacific ocean.

  • Using classical computer vision techniques to generate a dataset of possible dolphins for labeling by a human expert.

  • Using the labeled dataset and machine learning methods to count dolphins from drone video footage.

Teaching

2015 - Present Postgraduate Demonstrator University of St Andrews

PH5023 Monte Carlo Radiation Transport Techniques; demonstrated in lab sessions and gave guest lectures. AS3013 Computational Astrophysics; lab session demonstrator. CS5014 Machine Learning; lab session demonstrator. Invigilator for several tests. Assistant supervisor for 14 undergraduate dissertations at BSc, MPhys, and MSci level in both Physics and Computer Science.

Reviewer

Medical Research Scotland - 2020

Publications

Published:

  • I.R.M. Barnard, E. Eadie, L. McMillan, H. Moseley, T. Brown, K. Wood, R. Dawe, Could psoralen plus ultraviolet A1 (PUVA1) work? Depth penetration achieved by phototherapy lamps. British Journal of Dermatology 2019.

  • I.R.M. Barnard, P. Tierney, C.L. Campbell, L. McMillan, H. Moseley, E. Eadie, C.T.A. Brown, K. Wood, Quantifying Direct DNA Damage in the Basal Layer of Skin Exposed to UV Radiation from Sunbeds. Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology, Volume 94, Issue 5, pp 1017-1025.

  • L Mcmillan, P. O’Mahoney, K. Feng, K. Zhou, I.R.M. Barnard, C. Li, S. Ibbotson, E. Eadie, C.T.A. Brown, and K. Wood, Development of a predictive Monte Carlo radiative transfer model for ablative fractional skin laser, Lasers in Surgery and Medicine 2020

  • C.S. Oedekoven,, L. McMillan, S. Fatima, D. Harris-Birtill, C. Faustino, L. Marshall, S.T. Buckland, and C.E. Lennert-Cody, Trial survey for eastern tropical Pacific dolphins: Project report, IATTC Special Report, No. 24.

Currently in review:

  • L. McMillan, S. Fatima, C.S. Oedekoven, C. Faustino, C.E. Lennert-Cody, S.T. Buckland, D. Harris-Birtill, Triton a mixed machine-learning strategy forclassifying cetaceans in low-resolution video

Currently in preparation:

  • L McMillan, S. Reidt, C. McNicol, I.R.M Barnard, M. MacDonald, C.T.A. Brown, K. Wood, Imaging in thick samples, a phased Monte Carlo radiation transfer algorithm.

  • L McMillan, S. Smirni, I.R.M Barnard, F. Khan, C.T.A. Brown, K. Wood, Modelling of tissue autofluorescence for novel biomarkers for cardiovascular disease.

Prizes

  • Best Talk, British Medical and Lasers Association Conference 2019

Talks and posters presented

  • British Medical and Lasers Association Conference, Darlington, May 2016, talk

  • British Medical and Lasers Association Conference, Manchester, May 2017, talk

  • Invited speaker at St Andrews Monte Carlo Summer School, St Andrews, August 2017, talk

  • Invited speaker at St Andrews Computer Science School Seminar, April 2019, talk

  • British Medical and Lasers Association Conference, London, May 2019, talk

  • International Conference of Biophotonics, St Andrews, May 2019, poster

  • Invited speaker at St Andrews Monte Carlo Summer School, St Andrews, August 2019, talk

  • Co-Founded Code & Cake seminar series 2018-2019 (https://code-and-cake.github.io/)

Courses Attended

  • Hands-on Introduction to HPC, EPCC, Edinburgh, 2016

  • Message-passing Programming with MPI, EPCC, Edinburgh, 2017

Other Skills

  • IT: Linux, Inkscape, Git, Blender, LaTeX, Microsoft Office Suite, ImageJ

  • Programming Languages: Fortran, Python, BASH, C/C++, Mathematica, IDL

  • Programming libraries: Numpy, Matplotlib, Astropy, PyTorch, Scipy, Scikit-image, openCV, Parsl, Pandas, Numba

  • Languages: French (basic)