Caley Yardley
Searching for new physics with measurements of Top+X processes and effective field theory interpretations using the ATLAS experiment at the LHC
I did my first DISCnet placement with BHESCo (Brighton & Hove Energy Services Co-op) because I wanted some experience with both a smaller and not-for-profit organisation. Their aim of improving energy accessibility and sustainability in the Brighton & Hove area appealed to me over a placement with a larger or more profit-driven organisation. However, it was also additionally interesting that I arrived on placement as the relative “expert” on what I was tasked to do, given the absence of a colleague with conventional data science skills.
This posed an intriguing and challenging opportunity. On placement, I was tasked to develop a time-series simulation of solar-PV-battery systems into a tool usable by BHESCo for optimising their projects. While this directly utilised my existing skills from DISCnet and PhD training, I had to make sure that my work would be accessible and easily usable when I wasn’t around and I wasn’t able to use some of my standard toolkits and libraries in Python; this meant learning how to adapt my formally-developed skills in a less conventional data science environment.
The primary result of my work was thus a tool developed in Microsoft VBA to be accessible within an Excel worksheet which was tested & document for BHESCo to use at the click of a button. Once this was in place I also did some work using Microsoft’s SQL (yet another lesson in Microsoft’s non-conventional toolbox) which was a fun opportunity to practice my database design and management for some of BHESCo’s project admin.
Overall, my placement was not a conventional data science learning opportunity but it was an interesting one. All the better too that it was with a fun and friendly group of people who I’ll remember fondly. It’ll be interesting how this differs to my second placement, which I hope will be with a slightly larger or more “conventional” data science team.