Simon Wilshin

Do you remember that kid whose favorite question was 'why'. Ever wonder what happened to him? Well the short answer is he trundled off to university to study physics, got a PhD. studying string theory and went on to work as a biologist. If you are looking for a place where you can find out all about him, then this is it.

Research

My major research interests are in the analysis of oscillatory motion, biomechanics, and the coupling between mechanical locomotor systems and the architectures that control them, both neural and synthetic.

Central to my work is understanding a wide variety of solutions to the locomotor problem: the problem of adjusting the distance between an agents current location and the location of its food, den, mate, predator, rival, water or other point of interest. I've worked with a wide variety of animals including cockroaches, dogs, spiders, mice and turkeys learning both how they move and most interestingly why.

Not all methods of movement are created equally. There are situations in which this is obvious, a dolphin does much better under water than a mountain goat will, but dolphins can have trouble navigating dry, highly inclined terrain. There are also situations where the advantages of different locomotion strategies are not immediately obvious. The typical time scale of movement for a running cockroach is much shorter than the time it takes for its nervous system to respond, even through fast channels like reflexes. The cockroach has solved this problem by using passively springy legs which ensure that it remains stable even with an explosive on its back.

My focus is on how animals deal with transitions and gait changing perturbations. How does a dog switch from a walk to a trot? How do spiders deal with missing limbs? How do mice deal with erroneous sensory perturbations?

Answering these questions requires a variety of tools, and in some instances, creating your own tools. I'm an experienced programmer, working mostly in python but I've used and dabbled in a wide variety of languages from C and C++ to Haskell. Code I've released for general consumption can be found on Github, use at your own risk.

I've also had far more opportunities to use the skills I developed during my PhD. than I might have anticipated. Everything from machine learning to topology to statistics to functional analysis has found a use at some point. I've learned mathematics is a near infinite pit of useful tools that find application in the most strange of circumstances.

Hobbies

When it comes to academic amateur hour here at my desk it is history, philosophy, theology and music that get most of my attention. I'm bad at all of these, but I'm having fun.

I'm interested in composition, conventional and algorithmic. I've written a few bits of music here and there. This is one of those areas I'm improving in but still kinda suck. If you are interested in hearing my work you can head on over to my Soundcloud.

I've an interest in gaming, mostly team focused games like Guns of Icarus and Rocket League. Have done a bit of competitive gaming in my time, piloting for the Bards. I also do a bit of eSports commentary for the Sunday Community Skirmish.