About Me
Career
These days I’m an architect/engineer type at RBS. Originally in High Performance Computing but more recently I’ve been working on a large data-store that combines a number of concepts from the NoSQL, Relational and Big Data worlds (more detail here). The project won the Banking Technology Award for “Best use of IT in Corporate and Investment Banking” and led to a few talks and papers about certain aspects of its architecture.
Previously I was at Thoughtworks - a fantastic place with truly unique people for whom I have a deep affection. Before moving to consultancy I worked for Barclays Capital for seven or so years and as a Research Physicist for a year or so before that.
Academics
I hold Master’s degrees in both Information Systems and Physics. My MSc project involved the the modelling of software evolution using a Monte Carlo approach (here and here) and led to some of the publications below. At Imperial College I won best project in the inter-departmental project presentation competition (View Presentation Animation). I guest lecture on and off at Brunel, UCL & Birkbeck.
Academic Publications
- Test Oriented Languages: Is it Time for a New Era? RefTest at IEEE International Conference on Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), 25th March 2011, Berlin, Germany (here)
- Enabling Testing, Design and Refactoring Practices in Remote Locations. RefTest at IEEE International Conference on Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), 25th March 2011, Berlin, Germany (here)
- Simulating Software Evolution with Varying Numbers of Developers and Validation Using OSS, Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC) 2009 (here)
- Chapter in the book “Software Process Change” part of the Lecture Notes on Computer Science series (here)
- ACM Transactions on Modelling and Computer Simulation (here)
- Paper at the International Workshop on Process Simulation’ at ICSE 2006 in Shanghai (here)
Conferences & Lectures
- Banking Technology Forum (presenter)
- Waters Technology European Trading Architecture Summit 2012 (panelist & presenter)
- Ovum Big Data and Analytics 2012 (panelist)
- QCon 2011 & 2012 (more, more)
- JavaOne 2011 (more)
- JAX 2011
- Oracle OpenWorld 2011 (more)
- UCL (Financial Computing) (more)
- University of London at Birkbeck (Advanced Databases) (more)
- University of Brunel (Software Architecture) (more)
- International Conference on Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST) 2011 (more, more)
- European Trading Architecture Summit 2011
- Coherence Special Interest Group 2010 & 2011 (http://www.benstopford.com/2011/11/04/coherence-implementation-patterns-slides-from-coherence-sig/#mce_temp_url#)
- Reftest 2010 (more)
- International Workshop on Process Simulation, ICSE 2006
Other stuff
I’m a keen snowboarder, surfer, downhill mountain biker and enjoy a boogie if I can find anyone who can dance West Coast Swing.
Contact: benstopford(at)gmail.com or follow me on twitter
Other People That Matter
My lovely sister: http://www.whiterabbitfilms.com
Pat Kua: http://thekua.com
Brian Oliver: http://www.brianoliver.com
Kuldeep Singh: http://elope.wordpress.com/
David Falcey: http://blogs.oracle.com/felcey/
