Computational Physicist · Research Software Engineer

About

I build simulations of physical systems, and the evidence that they are right.

I am a Research Software Engineer at the University of Exeter, with a Ph.D. in physics from UC Berkeley in computational cosmology — the end-to-end analysis behind POLARBEAR’s CMB polarization measurements, and a readout crosstalk systematic for the LiteBIRD satellite. Before Exeter I was the software deployment lead, at Data Management Level 4, for the SO:UK Data Centre, the UK arm of the Simons Observatory.

What I am usually brought in for is the middle of that chain: making something that is scientifically right also runnable at the size the problem actually is, and still the same answer next year on a different machine.

Research Interests

• CMB data analysis and cosmology
• Open quantum system dynamics
• Simulation of physical systems, end to end
• Verification and validation
• Numerical methods and high-performance computing
• Reproducibility
• Agentic engineering

Writing and Talks

• “JIT compilers for scientific computing in Python: Numba vs. JAX” — PyCon UK 2025
• “A Primer on Just-In-Time (JIT) Compilation”
• “Coding With Agents: What’s Different, What’s at Stake”
• HPC guide — best practice for using HPC, independent of any one facility

Connect

• Blog
• GitHub
• Google Scholar
• ORCID
• arXiv
• LinkedIn
• ved.nelok@tcatnoc