Elliott Wise, PhD: Resume

Email: ell.wise@gmail.com
GitHub: github.com/ellwise
Website: wiseideas.au

Summary

Senior data engineer with a background in applied mathematics and simulation. Designs and builds scalable products, models complex systems including physical and economic flows. Experienced in digital twin development, large-scale infrastructure analytics, and highly regulated industries. Leads technical teams and architects cloud-native data products and tooling.

Skills/Tools

Data and software engineering

• Cloud, warehousing, orchestration: AWS, GCP, Azure, PostgreSQL, BigQuery, Airflow, dbt, Dataform
• Languages: SQL, Python, JavaScript, Julia, MATLAB, R
• Knowledge graphs: OWL 2
• Version control, issue tracking: Git, GitHub/GitLab

Data science, mathematics

• Libraries: OpenAI, Pandas, Plotly/Dash, scikit-learn, PyTorch, Kedro, React, Flask
• Classical machine learning: Classification (e.g. Random Forests, LightGBM, Naive Bayes, Causal Bayesian Networks), clustering (e.g. DBSCAN)
• Deep learning: OpenAI agent development, Gemini deployment within BigQuery, convolutional autoencoders for image processing
• Applied mathematics: Linear programming, discrete event simulation, numerical methods for differential equations

Education

PhD	Numerical Analysis	University College London	2018
BEng (Hons)	Mechatronics	Australian National University	2012
BSc	Mathematics	Australian National University	2012

• Educational focus: Scientific and industrial modelling techniques, high-performance computing, acoustics.
• Research focus: Modelling and simulation of physical systems, skills foundational to digital twin development.
• Dean’s Prize (£88k scholarship), Faculty of Engineering, University College London.
• Summer Research Scholarship (AU$4k), Mathematical Sciences Institute, Australian National University.

Experience

Senior Advisor | Gutteridge, Haskins & Davey (GHD) | 2021–Present

• Data engineer and simulation specialist within the Data & Insights business group, serving clients who manage large-scale infrastructure across energy, rail, telecommunications, and government.
• Regional lead for techno-economic modelling in EMEA, responsible for technical leadership within the business group, and project leader across all client-facing work.
• Energy system and digital twin work includes:
  • Green hydrogen facility simulation and optimisation for supporting investment decisions.
  • Simulating post-Brexit border flows for goods and people through UK ports to support engineering and investment decisions (model built from the ground up, nominated for an award within the client organisation).
  • Creating a field-level farm model covering the whole UK, to simulate financial and carbon impacts of environmental incentive payments (model built from the ground up and still being used after multiple years).
  • Reviewing the role of a digital twin within a major UK rail operator’s data and digital strategy.
  • Developing web services for grid flexibility and open data publication for a large electricity transmission operator (built from the ground up, but interacting with existing data systems and flows).
• Language modelling work includes:
  • Designing and productionising LLM-based free-text classification as part of a ground-up build of data assets critical to multi-million-pound monthly charges between telecommunications companies.
  • Prototyping an LLM-based interface to ontology tooling.
• Strategic and advisory work includes:
  • Mapping and reviewing data flows against source systems, wider data architectures, and operational processes for a large telecommunications provider.
  • Interviewing and training as part of change management efforts supporting the roll-out of data-as-a-service at a large transportation authority.
  • Training a client’s data product team in software testing practices and data quality checking.

Senior Consultant | Amey Strategic Consulting | 2019–2021

• Data scientist and software engineer within the Data Science & Analytics team.
• Clients were organisations involved in the ownership and management of large-scale public infrastructure.
• Energy system work included the implementation of regulatory policy within Ofgem to assess network investment plans against asset health and risk profiles.
• Work included developing web apps to manage operations, developing and assuring new regulatory policy addressing risk management for large asset bases, data analysis through both classical statistics and machine learning, and simulating operational systems of assets for commercial analysis.
• Work also included substantial elements of management consulting, such as managing stakeholders and leading workshops.

Research Associate | Imperial College London | 2018–2019

• Mathematician within the Non-Destructive Evaluation group, which developed ultrasonic measurement techniques for detecting flaws in mechanical components.
• Developed coupled physics- and ML-based ultrasonic imaging algorithms for inspecting petrochemical plants and pipelines (e.g. corrosion in difficult-to-inspect locations).
• Simulated metamaterials, a hypothesised mechanism for sound damping in moth wings thought to aid them in avoiding predation by echolocating bats (joint work with the Mathematics department).

PhD Researcher | University College London | 2014–2018

• Member of the Biomedical Ultrasound Group, which developed new ultrasonic therapies (e.g. cancer ablation, neuro-stimulation) and associated modelling and simulation tools. Also collaborated with computer science researchers at Brno University of Technology.
• Contributed to the development of the k-Wave MATLAB toolbox for medical ultrasound simulation. This had over 10,000 registered users and more than 700 citations.
• Research included four projects, which tackled different aspects of the computational efficiency of the mathematics (Fourier collocation) underlying the toolbox’s acoustic model.
• Authored 7 journal papers and 2 conference papers based on work conducted here.

Mathematician | Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation | 2013–2014

• This is Australia’s national science agency, whose chief role is to improve the economic and social performance of Australian industry.
• Sat within Computational Informatics, primarily applying modelling and numerical simulations to materials science problems, including:
  • Designed a polymer filter to bind and capture proteins for antimicrobial use. Involved molecular dynamics and metadynamics simulations (NAMD, LAMMPS).
  • Improved the lifespan of ion thrusters (a form of spacecraft propulsion) through better material choice informed by simulations of sputtering.
  • Modelled (using finite-element analysis in COMSOL) the transverse deformation in carbon fibres to aid characterisation of elastic properties.
• Collaborated with a gender studies scholar to investigate changes to the content of AfterEllen (a queer pop-culture news site) before and after its acquisition by MTV. This involved web-scraping and topic modelling.

Consultant | Eggler Consulting Engineers | 2010–2012

• Eggler Consulting Engineers provides systems engineering management for military vehicle projects. Role provided early experience in large-scale, safety-critical defence systems.