Philip Schlup

I have been an experimental scientist, using lasers to study atoms, molecules, and cells. I have been a software engineer building tools for teaching math, science, and languages to students old and young. I have been a film school student, shooting, editing, and crewing short film shoots.

I want to build solutions that make peoples' lives easier, more efficient, and more fun. I want to write software that's so interactive and intuitive that you can use it almost with a sense of touch. I want to create visual media that entertains and informs, making complex concepts accessible without dumbing them down.

PhD Thesis

University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Thesis: Passive Optical Bandwidth Control of Quasi-Phase Matched Optical Parametric Oscillators (PDF 2.85 MB)

During my thesis, I built and analysed lasers and nonlinear optical sources for chemical spectroscopy applications. I was fortunate to receive Visiting Research scholarships to:

Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia)
University of St Andrews (St Andrews, Scotland, UK)
Coherent Technologies Inc, (Lafayette, CO, USA)

BSc (Hons) Dissertation

University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Dissertation: Studies of Injection Seeding and Threshold in β-BaB2O4 Optical Parametric Oscillator (PDF 430 kB)

Software

LaserCanvas

Interactive modeling of laser resonators, aimed at researchers and students. The original project was written in Win32 C++. A new version was written in vanilla JavaScript. The source code is on GitHub. See it in action: LaserCanvas

Advanced features in LaserCanvas Web, including equations, variables, and property graphs.

e-Learning

My professional software development career has allowed me to dedicate almost ten years to building e-learning systems. The products aimed to provide engaging and effective content to learners, intuitive authoring platforms to content creators, and insightful reporting to educators.

Teaching tools

Tool for teaching numbers and place value, here localized to te Reo Maori language. The tool was initially written in Flash / Actionscript and subsequently rewritten in JavaScript.

Flash / Actionscript simulator of the frequency-resolved optical gating technique to measure laser pulses. The yellow circles represent handles that can be dragged to control the simulation parameters.

x equals minus b plus or minus the square root of, b squared minus 4 ay c, divided by 2 ay

This LaTeX-to-text processor parses an equation and outputs text that is passed to a text-to-speech converter. Despite some possible ambiguities, I chose to prefer a "natural" reading style, rather than the explicit reading of parentheses and groups that other equation readers employ.

Lab software

Lab software written in Win32 C++ to communicate with spectrometers, stepper motors, and data acquisition boards. These were used to measure experimental data. Data processing and visualization included on-screen draggable controls to adjust processing parameters in real time.

Data acquisition software, here used to measure optical signals scanned over a 2d plane. The parameters can be adjusted handles by manipulating control handles in real time. Multiple scans can be combined to form 3D images.

And here is a little game I put together with our kids, based on her favorite toy horse, Lily.

Illustrations

3D POV-Ray / Blender

Holographic microscopy and object reconstruction. The 3d shape is a reconstruction of experimentally measured data.

Electron and ion imaging of single atom photoionization.

Experimental setup of difference frequency generation.

Synthetic aperture experiment to measure vibrational motion.

Experimental setup of cross beam spectrometer.

Exploded assembly view of optical fiber end cap.

Third-harmonic generation microscopy with photomultiplier detector.

3D OpenGL

Visual representation of electric field projections.

Tabletop laser assembly.

3D fractal tree generation.

Line art

Signaling molecules exchanged between cells.

Second-hardmonic generation and interference in birefringent crystal.

Light pulse electric field projections.

Measurement of phase response of liquid crystal using interference.

Animations

Animation showing the recording of three dimensional structures using second harmonic generation microscopy. The object can subsequently be reconstructed from the recorded interference fringes. Rendered in Blender.

Animation showing ion and electron spectroscopy of single atom photoionization (COLTRIMS). The momentum of each fragment is recorded via time-of-flight measurements, which allows the ionization event to be reconstructed. Rendered using POV-Ray (a long time ago).

Animation illustrating three chromosomes in a cell undergoing mitosis. Rendered in Blender.

DNA strand and the start of its assembly into chromosomes. The animation is not intended to be scientifically accurate, solely to indicate the vast quantity of individual elements that make up DNA.

Illustration of neurons exchanging information. Rendered in Blender.

Rendering of nucleosome and DNA strand. The structural data was taken from the, Protein Data Bank. This was a project to build a custom protein viewer at a time when the availability of such viewers was more limited. Rendered using C++ and OpenGL.

Whimsical instrument playing The Flight of the Bumblebee. The clip was created programmatically by defining the trajectory of a single note, and animating the complete set using a MIDI file.

Filmography