A bit about me

I was born in South Africa and lived there until I came to the UK with my family in 1999.

My hometown is Swindon, Wiltshire, but I now live in Coventry.

The academic stuff

My PhD

My project is to make intelligent systems to mine spectroscopic data from Chemistry (Circular Dichroism - a technique ideally suited to obtaining structural information about proteins and other chiral molecules, and linear dichroism studying membrane proteins in liposomes and fibrous proteins). Intelligent systems are programs that mimic biology to solve a problem. I work mainly in self ofganising maps - a type of neural network - but I think I'm about to try my hand at genetic algorithms. I spend my time in Engineering - in Evor Hines' group - and in MOAC, Coventry House. My Chemistry supervisor is Alison Rodger - head of MOAC.

The masters year with MOAC:

• My first miniproject was in Biological Sciences, looking at the action of gramicidin – a peptide antibiotic – on bacteria, specifically E. Coli. My supervisor was Will Gaze, with advice from Liz Wellington, and some more from Alison Rodger and Matt Hicks.

• My second mini project was in Chemistry, looking at the specific mechanisms used by gramicidin and various antibiotics of the class aurein to kill bacteria. We studied the effect of these antibiotics on models of cell membranes, liposomes made from DMPC, and on membranes made from lipids of E. coli. I used linear dichroism, LD, to study if the antibiotics inserted into the membranes, and dynamic light scattering, DLS, to measure the size distribution of the liposomes. I worked with Matt Hicks and Alison Rodger on this project.
• My third and final mini project was in simulation, also in Chemistry: Simulations of surface active proteins – hydrophobins from the fungus Trichoderma reesei. We were using the martini force field, coarse grained model of the protein. The aim was to understand how the protein behaves at a water/air interface. I was working with David Cheung in the Alessandro Troisi Group.
  

University of Leeds

I studied physics at the University of Leeds 2005-2009 to get a bachelors plus masters in straight physics.

My final year project at Leeds

• My final year project was: Using Resolating Superconducting Cavities towards making a Quantum Computing Processor. Here I worked with the Experimental Quantum Information group, QIX, under Prof. Ben Varcoe.

• The year before that in the summer of 2008, I worked on a 2 month project with Dr Luis Hueso (now Prof Hueso at CIC Nanogune, Spain) on using organic molecules for the insulating layers in tunnel junctions (organic tunnel junctions). This involved sputtering to fabricate the electronics and x-ray diffraction, AFM to characterise/image the surfaces.

I went to New College, Swindon during 2002 – 2004, where I did A-levels in Physics, Maths and Chemistry.

Outside MOAC

There's hiking, reading about science and scientists – cuz I'm a geek, learning languages – or rather starting a new one then dropping it, cuz I get bored.

I have been known to get into discussions about politics and religion/belief.

I did once go gliding, which was fun, really should get back into that – flying a plane is awesome fun!

I was in the hiking club at Leeds in my final year - Yorkshire is a great place to be in a hiking club. Every walk ended at a pub.

Nothing else significant – I really should learn some foreign languages, being monolingual is embarrassing for a South African (I'm South African and British – citizenship these days is damned expensive!).

Hiking in the Malvern hills with some friends a few years back.

v.a.hall@warwick.ac.uk