Dr. Jim O'Donnell

Research Software Engineer

Jim gained a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1995, modelling the composition and properties of interstellar dust in FORTRAN 77. Since then, he has worked for the Royal Observatory Greenwich and National Maritime Museum in London, where he learnt web development and accessibility, and was technical lead for a variety of digital humanities projects. More recently, he has spent more than ten years building online tools for the Zooniverse citizen science platform.

Since joining the group in 2024, Jim is interested in working with researchers to develop usable, accessible, maintainable software tools.

Recent projects include:

PKPD Explorer: a web app for exploration of pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic models of chemical compounds.
Jamaica Systemic Risk Assessment Tool (JSRAT): a web-based mapping tool for visualising and assessing the impact of climate change on Jamaican infrastructure networks.
ATLAS API: A web app, and REST API, for classifying astronomical transient observations.