Dr Michael Cauchi

Michael was awarded an MChem in Chemistry with Studies in France at the University of Kent at Canterbury, and an MSc in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Salford. He worked as an Analytical Chemist and LabVIEW Programmer at Astra in Sweden for one year, then as an Analytical Chemist and Data Analyst at Tate & Lyle Sugars in London for two years. He then undertook a PhD in Data Science at Cranfield University, during which time he honed his IT and programming skills, such as in LabVIEW, Matlab and R. He stayed on at Cranfield as an Academic Research Fellow undertaking both teaching and research duties in the areas of bioinformatics (metabolomics), statistics and data science (pattern recognition and machine learning), as well as overseeing the group projects and supervising MSc individual project students. Michael also managed to output a number of research publications from both his funded research and some of the MSc project students.

After a short role as a Senior Data Scientist for a startup based in Manchester, Michael later spent three years as a Lecturer in Statistics and Operations Research at the University of Limerick (UL) in Ireland before returning to London as a Data Scientist Consultant (Infosys Ltd) and then an Assistant Professor in Data Science (Northeastern University London).

Michael joined the University of Northampton (UON) as a Technician Demonstrator (Computing) in January 2022 in the Technology department in FAST. He is focused on maintaining the comprehensive list of software applications as employed and required by academic colleagues in the Faculty of Arts, Science and Technology (FAST). He also liaises with the IT department to oversee and maintain the desktop PCs located in the teaching rooms within the Learning Hub but also across campus. He also supports some academics in their research such as in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Sports Science and Bioinformatics.

Michael has been a volunteer STEM Ambassador since 2011 visiting primary and secondary schools to deliver specialist-subject interactive talks, hands-on activities, and careers talks – or to simply help other STEM Ambassadors at STEM Fairs. He therefore also liaises with the Schools Engagement Team at the University to help with their events such as the annual STEAM Northants.

Michael is a Technical Lead in the Recognition Strand of the Technician Commitment.

Current and previous research interests in the areas of Data Science (inluding computer vision and machine learning), Sports Science (e.g. involving image processing) and Bioinformatics.

An ongoing interest is "non-invasive cancer and disease diagnostics" using machine learning applied to laboratory-acquired datasets, such as from GC-MS, HPLC-MS, NMR, FTIR, Raman, UV-VIS, fluorescence, etc.  

Michael currently supports activities on some of the Computing modules assisting students to resolve coding issues in and encouraging them to understand what the code is doing. These computing modules include:

• CSY1020: Problem Solving and Programming (Python)
• CSY1062: Computer Communications (Networking)
• CSY1063: Web Development (HTML/CSS/JavaScript)
• CSY1065: Database Design & Development (SQL)
• CSY2080: Relational Databases (SQL)
• CSY2089: Web Programming (PHP/SQL)

He also delivers specialist sessions involving the use of R for data processing and analysis to Life Science students on:

• SLS2057: Bioinformatics (R/RStudio)
• SLS2001: Genes & Genomics (BioConductor)

In previous roles, Michael has delivered topics on statistics, operations research, metabolomics and R/Matlab/Python Programming.