Michael Sean Grant

M.A. (Cantab), M.Sc., Ph.D.

profile

Nationality: British

Based in: Berlin, Germany

• At the BBC:
  • Pyramid (BIMA award winner, RTS nominated), the world's first interactive TV adventure.
  • Spooks Interactive (BAFTA winner)
  • The Test The Nation series (BAFTA nominated, EMMA winner)
  • Walking With Beasts (BAFTA winner, EMMA winner)—since rebroadcast in Australia.
  • Modular configurable applications reused for such diverse services as Fame Academy, Question Time, and sports events with multiple video streams and live results, such as the Six Nations rugby tournament.
• At S&T:
  • Electronic programme guides for Freeview Australia and Freeview New Zealand.
  • Portal services on Freeview (UK) offering access to online channels, including VuTV (channel 238), TV Player (channel 241), Vision TV (channel 244).
  • Planet Knowledge documentary access service (Freeview channel 245).

Also put together a toolset, now open source, for developing in MHEG-5, including a compiler, emulator/step-debugger, Eclipse editor, and FitNesse fixtures for automated acceptance tests of interactive TV services.

Strategy and Technology, Ltd

2009–2015: Senior Software Engineer (2009), Principal Software Engineer (2010–2015)

• Took a principal role in the Hybrid development team, including mentoring team members in design, coding and testing and documentations standards and techniques on a day-to-day basis.
• Developed Java components for interactive applications and management systems.
• Designed and developed, using Java and other high level languages, production and management tools for MHEG authoring.
• Participated in system design and implementation for application systems in MHEG and, recently, also HbbTV, including the use of well-structured data systems.
• Worked with both colleagues and customers on system design issues.
• Helped train other team members.

BBC

2003–2009: Senior Software Engineer, Interactive TV

• Helped manage projects by liaising with producers and planning technical work for my team in consultation with them.
• Managed development within my team by assigning tasks to team members, overseeing their execution and ensuring deadlines were met.
• Devised tools to aid the development and deployment of services, and to ensure their robustness.
• Helped train and mentor new members of my team and the test team, and copresent internal courses.

2000–2003: Software Engineer, Interactive TV

• Planned and programmed interactive applications on digital television and digital satellite set-top boxes used by up to fourteen million people (2004 Olympics).
• Contributed to projects over the full software life cycle.
• Wrote software executing on the BBC's servers to enter and manage the data for these.
• Worked as part of a team of eight, including in pair programming.

Heriot-Watt University

1996–2000: Academic research (as Ph.D. student)

Used Genetic Programming to explore the automation of sensor planning for machine vision. This included:

• Designing languages and implementing simple parsers for them, along with functions to execute evolved programs and assess their quality.
• Extending the public-domain core code used to add the facility for strong typing to these languages.
• Designing and implementing a graphical user interface for the system.

1996–2000: Teaching (as Ph.D. student)

• Tutored second-year undergraduates in Artificial Intelligence; including setting and marking work.
• Assisted in undergraduate labs on 68000 assembly language and C++ programming.

• 1996–2000: Ph.D. in Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University
• 1995–1996: M.Sc. in Information Technology (achieving a Distinction), Aston University
• 1992–1995: M.A. in Natural Sciences, Peterhouse, Cambridge