Hi, I’m Conor MacBride, a Data Scientist at Allstate Northern Ireland, specialising in artificial intelligence and software engineering. My work focuses on natural language processing (NLP) and generative AI, developing practical tools that enhance efficiency and decision-making.

At Allstate, I’ve worked on pioneering AI-driven projects, including deploying one of the company’s first generative AI solutions aimed at improving the customer experience. This solution assists insurance representatives by enhancing the clarity and consistency of customer communications. The project received attention in international media and was shortlisted for the Belfast Telegraph IT Awards.

Outside of work, I actively contribute to open-source projects, maintaining tools widely used in the scientific and developer communities. I’ve played a pivotal role in projects like Matplotlib’s pytest-mpl plugin and OpenAstronomy’s GitHub Actions workflows, supporting research efforts in astrophysics and beyond.

I have a PhD in Physics from Queen’s University Belfast, where I developed numerical simulations to study energy dissipation in the Sun’s atmosphere. My research included creating mcalf, an open-source Python package for analysing solar observations. Before that, I earned a first-class MPhys Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from the University of St Andrews. While at St Andrews, I also co-founded insight, an award-winning science podcast.