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Ms Francesca Middleton

Middleton Francesca.jpg

Junior Lecturer

Thermodynamic Modelling & Machine Learning

Phone +27 21 808 9632
Office Office: C317.4

Short Bio

PhD (Chemical Engineering) Candidate, Stellenbosch University 

2026 – Current 

Supervisors: Prof Jamie Cripwell (Stellenbosch University), Profs Florence Vermiere (KU Leuven)

Topic: Graph neural networks used for solubility prediction of active pharmaceutical ingredients, to be finalised following proposal acceptance

Junior Lecturer, Stellenbosch University 

2026 – Current 

Data Engineer, Lloyds Banking Group 

2023 – 2025

Built data pipelines on cloud and on-premises infrastructure, including data loading, storage, transformation, and assessment of data quality. Led small teams building tools for the wider lab, such as a synthetic data generation tool. Trained graduates as data engineers.

Tech stack: Python, DBT, SQL, Java, Jenkins, Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker, SAS, GitHub, Google Cloud Platform, Gemini.

Master of Engineering (Chemical) (Research) (cum laude), Stellenbosch University 

2022 – 2023 

Supervisor: Prof Jamie Cripwell

Topic: Matrix Completion for Pseudodata Generation of Mixture Thermophysical Properties: A Case Study in Excess Enthalpy

Award: Best Master of Engineering Student in the Chemical Engineering Department (2023)

Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical), Stellenbosch University 

2018 – 2021 

Award: Minerals Education Trust Fund Prize for the Best Final-Year Project (2021)

 

Research Interests

Machine learning methods for thermodynamic property prediction, especially incorporating fundamental and empirical thermodynamic models into the machine learning architecture.

 

Selected Publications

A list of her published works can be found on her Google Scholar profile.

Google Scholar profile link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CbQeWwQAAAAJ&hl=en