Lorcan Nicholls

Undergraduate Engineering Student

University of Cambridge

National University of Singapore

Welcome!

Hi! I’m a recent engineering graduate living in Leeds, UK after finishing my Master’s degree in bioengineering at the University of Cambridge.

My website showcases the main projects I’ve worked on and experience I’ve gained both at university and independently.

I enjoy studying topics across the union of engineering, scientific computing, biotech and machine learning, any and all of which I have interests in pursuing as careers.

Interests

⚙️ Bioengineering
⚡ Renewable Energy
🤖 Robotics
🧠 Machine Learning
💹 Algorithmic Trading

Education

MEng Biongineering, 2020—24
University of Cambridge (Girton College)
BEng Year Exchange Programme, 2022—23
National University of Singapore (USP)

Skills

Engineering

Bioengineering, bioelectronics, robotics and control systems

Programming

Scientific computing, machine learning, computer vision, utility automation

Analytics

Data analysis and visualisation, statistical modelling

Technologies

Experience

Research Student

Bio-Inspired Robotics Lab (BIRL)

Jul 2023 – Sep 2023 Cambridge

Investigated the use of hydrogel-based e-skin for multi-touch sensors via electrical impedance tomography (EIT) and published a paper to ICRA
3D printed and assembled a tensile testing machine for characterising the hydrogel’s mechanical and viscoelastic properties
Designed the EIT apparatus in CAD and fabricated from PLA using a laser cutter for the frame, and a gelatin-glycerol-carbon black sensorised e-skin.
Programmed a UR5 industrial robot to gather a real dataset for pressing of the e-skin, and trained/tested neural nets to predict touch position based on the EIT data.

Data Analyst

Oodle Car Finance

Jul 2021 – Sep 2021 London, UK & Remote

Developed a new benchmark for comparing delinquency rates, fit to a variety of customer risk indicators
Worked closely with the analytics team to create new metrics for predicting arrears deterioration from live Salesforce databases with Looker, SQL and Excel, including use of VBA and Python for utility scripting and automation
Verified a 30% increase in customer call-to-payment rates due to the adoption of a new IVR telephony system

Work Experience (Automotive Engineering and CAD)

Cummins Turbo Technologies

Apr 2019 – Apr 2019 Huddersfield, UK

Designed diesel engine components to engineering drawing specifications with Creo
Stripped down a turbocharger in Lab Ops and examined it for surface defects using an X-ray diffractometer
Simulated component response to mechanical and thermal loads
Presented to an audience of 20+ coworkers, including teams via conference call in India and China

Work Experience (Semiconductor QA)

Arm

Oct 2018 – Nov 2018 Sheffield, UK

Analysed a large JSON dataset on transistor characteristics using Python in the Spyder IDE to identify trends in performance
Presented a method to identify pairwise correlation using Seaborn, NumPy and Pandas to an audience of 10+ coworkers