Nick Pope successfully completed his PhD entitled "Supporting the Migration from Construal to Program: Rethinking Software Development" under the supervision of Dr Meurig Beynon. His thesis is both a significant contribution to Empirical Modelling research, and a vigorous critique and reappraisal of some of its established principles and tools.

Where previous EM research highlighted the role of families of definitions in developing construals Nick has proposed a richer framework in which to conceptualise the transition from construals to programs. In his vision, the current state of a construal is expressed by a single binary function of the form ϕ: R × R → R that changes dynamically.

His work draws on ideas from prototype-based object-oriented software development and functional programming that have been the basis of practical tools and models first deployed in Warwick Games Design Society. Nick is currently working on the development of a web-based EM tool that will integrate his own distinctive contribution with those of many other graduates from the EM research group.

Nick's independent spirit has not only been evident in his research contribution: he spends as much time as possible trekking, ski-ing, cycling and mountaineering. At the time of writing Nick is believed to be scaling some 4000m peaks in Morocco.