Dr. Timothy Poon

Senior Research Software Engineer

Timothy discovered his passion for scientific software while studying for his PhD in Physics and Astronomy in the Nanoscale Physics group at the University of Birmingham, where he developed an algorithm for the reconstruction of electron tomographic datasets at atomic resolution. Since then, he has aimed to promote quality software to the scientific community in his career and focuses on designing efficient, lightweight and maintainable software that can provide answers to a variety of research questions.

He joined Diamond Light Source, the national synchrotron, after his studies to support the imaging experimental facilities, where he was involved in the development of ptychography software (e.g. PtyPy) and designed data analysis pipelines for different techniques such as spectroscopy, diffraction and tomography. Working directly with scientists and researchers has guided his optimisation and algorithm development efforts, including CUDA programming and HPC usage. Some of his contributions to the scientific open-source software community include h5py, pyfftw and HyperSpy. Alongside his work, he is keen on communicating technical concepts to diverse audiences, from fellow colleagues to secondary school students on work experience programmes. His main programming language is Python and he is also interested in other lower-level languages such as C and Rust, which he is currently exploring.

He joined the OxRSE group at the start of autumn 2025 and is working primarily with research fellows in the Schmidt AI in Science Fellowship, where he provides software support and delivers training on software engineering best practices.