About
Dr Stephen Phillips is a Principal Research Engineer at the University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre. He joined in 2004 after working on novel computational chemistry software. He has taken many roles at IT Innovation, including software developer, architect, business analyst and technical project manager. Stephen has worked across a variety of technical domains such as secure distributed computer systems, dynamic resource provisioning, service level agreements and monitoring systems, 5G security and networking and cyber-security and risk management. Stephen currently leads IT Innovation's work in the SYNTHEMA project, working on the automation of data protection impact assessments and understanding the risks associated with synthetic medical data. Stephen manages the development of the Spyderisk semi-automated risk assessment software, contributing to the architecture, interpreting the needs of the users and prioritising developments. Stephen has a PhD in computational chemistry, first class degrees in both chemistry and mathematics and is a PRINCE2 Practitioner.
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Biography
As Principal Research Engineer at the University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre I lead IT Innovation's contribution to the SYNTHEMA project, researching the automation of data protection impact assessments and threats to privacy relating to synthetic medical data.
I am the Spyderisk product manager, organising the roadmap and development activities across many large projects. The software models socio-technical systems, analysing the threats, calculating risks and proposing suitable controls for mitigating the risks.
I promote excellence in software engineering: dev-ops, git, continuous integration, docker.
Previously in this position:
I was the technical coordinator of the €4.9M H2020 CyberKit4SME project, making advanced cyber security tools available to SMEs and MEs.
In the FLAME project I led the end user activity. FLAME was a €6.9M H2020 project building a transformational service platform for future media internet applications. I led 15 trials for industrial adoption of 5G in the media sector, establishing process covering technical validation, user acceptance and administration all within an ethical framework and in compliance with GDPR.
From 2014 to 2018 I was responsible for planning the assignments of the Centre’s 30 personnel to projects to meet budgets, skills and aspirations chairing the planning meetings with the directors.
From 2013 to 2018 I managed the IT systems function at the Centre: both the day to day operations of the systems team and setting the strategy.
I coordinated the €2.6m GRAVITATE project. Responsible for delivering the project’s objectives:
innovative research integrated into a platform for reuniting and reassembling 3D scanned archaeological fragments in a virtual space, combining computed geometric properties with semantic data such as excavation dates and locations. I coordinated 7 partners across Europe and set the vision and strategy, requiring diplomacy and influence to align competing objectives along a common goal.
In my previous role as Senior Research Engineer:
Performing project management, software analysis and design roles in the area of inter-enterprise computing. Working on the application of service oriented infrastructures to the engineering, e-learning and media domains, particularly focussed on the tools, mathematics and services required to deal with the uncertainties inherent in complex systems.
Over 10 years in a wide variety of projects I learnt all aspects of the software development life-cycle, from requirements capture, specification and architecture, through coding (primarily in Java but some Python), integration, testing and packaging, to writing documentation, training and support. I have studied and promoted best practice such as version control (of software and documentation), automated build systems, continuous integration, automated testing and packaging and the use of virtualisation (now known as DevOps).
Some highlights:
- managed an £8M project of 25 international partners providing an experimentation platform bringing together real-time 3D reconstruction, social media analysis, streaming video and human sensors for professional athletes, museum visitors and tourists all underpinned with monitoring software to evaluate the QoE and QoS of the system (EXPERIMEDIA);
- analysed the performance of Amazon EC2 instances using the BonFIRE project cloud-computing facility and persuaded the project to provide low-level monitoring data and control;
- worked with broadcast media companies on the mathematics and tools required to understand the risks in digital preservation strategies (PrestoPRIME);
- helped pioneer the IaaS, PaaS and SaaS paradigm, primarily with engineering companies and managed the development of an application performance model (IRMOS);
- worked to understand and meet the requirements in secure distributed workflow systems for aerospace and automotive companies (SIMDAT).
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