Carl Hepburn

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Physics

General Information

Name:	Carl Jason Hepburn
e-mail:	hepcj@hotmail.com
Web-sites:	Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics Splung.com - a physics website for A-level students. Yemekbul.co.uk - Turkish recipe website and blog

Education

2006-2002	University of Essex: PhD. - GaInNAs Bi-directional Field-Effect Light-Emitting Devices.
2002-1999	University of Essex: MSc. (By Dissertation). Experimental Physics. (Temperature Dependence of Long-wavelength Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers).
1998-1995	University of Essex: BSc. (Hon's) 2:2 Theoretical Physics

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Employment

2008-Present	Search Engine Optimisation Specialist - Just Search. Duties include: keyword research, competitor analysis, on-page SEO for e-commerce sites.
2007-2008	Search Engine Optimisation Specialist and web developer, High Position.
Sep 2006- 2007	Physics Lecturer, Suffolk College, Ipswich.
2003-2006	Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) - While studying for my PhD I lectured at the University of Essex on the subject of HTML and web design.
2002	International Conference Secretary, Physics and Technology of Dilute Nitrides Workshop, Istanbul.

During my MSc, I have also taught physics privately and was a laboratory demonstrator for students of the Photonics and Laser Communications MSc. In addition I created and maintained the Physics Center and Optoelectronic Materials and Devices Research group web-pages at the University of Essex.

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Programming Languages and Computer Experience

General

I am fully competent with the Microsoft Office suite of applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access.

Programming Skills

Throughout my degree and research I have programmed using many programming languages including C++. My first modelling projects were completed using FORTRAN 90 but for my final-year undergraduate project, I used Mathematica to model the minimal surfaces of soap films when confined to a cubic framework. Since then, I have used Mathematica to model many problems such as the gain in quantum well semiconductor lasers and valence band structure. I have good knowledge of Matlab, Maple and Simulink. During my PhD I learned how to use ISE TCAD, an advanced finite element optoelectronic semiconductor device simulation and process package to model current transport and emission in novel Real-Space Transfer Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs).

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Web Developing

2D and 3D Graphics Software

I have a working knowledge of the following graphics software: Adobe PhotoShop, Corel Draw, Corel Photo Paint, Asymetrix 3Dfx, 3D Studio Max, Macromedia Flash and Actionscript along with Macromedia Fireworks.

Web Design

I have been hand coding web pages since 1999 and my knowledge has followed the development of the World Wide Web through HTML and more recently, XHTML. I use Cascading-Style Sheets (CSS) for style, layout and accessibility. I prefer to write my own code but I have used web design software including: Dreamweaver, FrontPage and Adobe Go-Live. Web-content is now more dynamic and I can write web-sites which use templates, a MySQL database and PHP to create dynamic pages. I have used other scripting languages such as CGI, Perl and of course JavaScript.I am currently involved in ethical Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) methods for increasing natural search.

The web-sites I have developed are: (newest first)

Splung.com - a physics web site created to help my A-level students learn physics. The site has been designed with W3 accessibility standards in mind with interactive simulations, written in ActionScript and Macromedia Flash.
Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics - Britney Spears guides you through the advanced physics that are fundamental to semiconductor lasers. The novel combination of physics and physique has been the cause of much acclaim, with the site appearing in many of the World's most prestigous newspaper and media, even receiving a mention on the BBC's topical news quiz, Have I Got News for You. Since the site's creation in 2000, it has received over fifteen-million hits and continues to be popular to this day.
Yemekbul.co.uk - Turkish web site run by a mySQL database and php.
My earliest web sites were created for the University of Essex and Hargreave-Hale stockbrokers, however these are now so old they have been superceded.

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Research Experience

My experimental research has been involved in designing and characterising semiconductor optoelectronic devices such as VCSELs, edge-emitting lasers and Vertical Cavity Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (VCSOAs).

In the past, I have investigated VCSELs that operate in the 1.55μm window, using GaInAsP/InP material systems. Dilute Nitride Semiconductors such as GaInNAs is the material of choice for semiconductor lasers operating in the 1.3 μm-1.55 μm. window. In studying these devices, I have used various experimental techniques to characterise optoelectronic devices including: photoluminescence (PL), electroluminescence (EL) and Hakki-Paoli measurements of gain spectra. Many of these techniques have been undertaken over a temperature range of 4.2 K to above 300 K to study their temperature dependence. In performing such experiments, I have become familiar with various laboratory equipment including: Nd-YAG lasers, monochromators, cryostats, vacuum systems, laser-diode controllers, optical spectrum analysers, boxcar averagers, lock-in amplifiers, pulse generators, photomultipliers, detectors, oscilloscopes, free-space optics, optical fibres and optical fibre preparation, Raman amplifiers and Erbium Doped Fibre Amplifiers (EDFAs). To acquire data, I have written interfaces to control equipment via the GPIB interface using LabView.

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Development Courses:

Physics and Technology of Dilute Nitrides Workshop, Istanbul 2002.
Laser Safety Course, National Radiaological Protection Board. (NRPB)
University of Aveiro, Portugal: European Commision Summerschool, Low Dimensional Semiconductors for Optoelectronic Devices and Communications Systems.
Low Dimensional Semiconductors for Optoelectronic Devices and Communications Systems (short course)
Optical Amplifiers for Telecommunications (short course)
Advanced Optical Communications (short course)

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Prizes and Awards

Shamim Sidiqqi award 2002, University of Essex.
Scientific American - best scientific web site 2001

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Publications

I. Sokmen, A. O'Brien-Davies, R. Potter, C. Hepburn, A. Boland-Thoms, M.J. Adams, J, Roberts, "Hot electron VCSEL ", Proc. SPIE Conf. on Physics and Simulation of Optoelectronic Devices VII, San Jose, California, SPIE 3625, pp. 336-345 (1999)
R. Sceats, C. J. Hepburn, R. J. Potter, A. Dyson, N. Balkan, M. J. Adams, "1.5μm Surface Emission from GaInAsP/InP HELLISH structure ", SPIE Conference (2001)
"Temperature dependence of GaInAsP VCSELs" - SPIE Conference on Physics and Simulation of Optoelectronic Devices, San Jose, California (2001)
N. Balkan, A. Serpenguzel, A. O. Brien-Davis, I. Sokmen, C. J. Hepburn, R. J. Potter, M. J. Adams J. S. Roberts, "VCSELs structure hot-electron light emitter ", Materials Science and Engineering, B47, pp 96-100 (2000)
R. Sceats, A. Dyson, C. J. Hepburn, R. J. Potter, A. Boland-Thoms, N. Balkan, G. Hill, C. C. Button, S. Pinches, "Hot-electron light emission from GaInAsP/InP structures with distributed Bragg reflectors ", Physica E, 17, pp 607-609 (2003)
C. J. Hepburn, R. Sceats, A. Borland-Thoms, N. Balkan, A. J. Dann, S. D. Perrin, I. Read, J. Reed, P. Cannard, M. A. Fisher, D. J. Elton, M. J. Harlow, "Temperature dependent operation of GaInAsP/InP VCSELs ", Semiconductor Science and Technology, 1, (2003)
S, Mazzucato, A. Erol, C.J. Hepburn, R.J. Potter, A. Boland-Thoms, A.J. Vickers, P.R. Chalker, T.B. Joyce and T.J. Bullough , N. Balkan, "Effect of Fast Thermal Annealing on the optical Spectroscopy in MBE and CBE grown GaInNAs/GaAs QWs: Blue shift versus red shift ", IEE Proc.Optoelectronics, 151, 5, pp 284-289 (2004)
C. J. Hepburn, J. Y. Wah, A. Boland-Thoms, N. Balkan, "GaInNAs and GaAs, top-hat vertical-cavity semiconductor optical amplifier (VCSOA) based on longitudinal current transport ", Physica Stat. Sol. C, 2, 8, pp 3096-3099 (2005)
E. Tiras, C. J. Hepburn, N. Balkan, M. Saarinen, M. Pessa, T. Jouhti, "Performance Study of SQW GaInNAs Fabry-Perot Lasers ", Accepted ICSNN-2006 to be published in Physica Stat. Sol.C (2007).
C. J. Hepburn, N.A. Zakhleniuk, M.J. Adams and N. Balkan, "Modelling of Real-Space-Transfer Optical Emitters ", (to be published 2007)

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Other Interests

My hobbies include drawing and painting. I also enjoy playing the piano.

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