Director, Software Sustainability Institute
Tel +44 (0)131 650 5957
Fax +44 (0)131 650 6555
I am the PI and Director of the Software Sustainability Institute, a national facility
for research software users and developers providing specialist software engineering
skills to drive the continued improvement and impact of research software.
My current research interests are in community engagement and
development, software sustainability and the integration and analysis of data. I work
with research communities across the UK and globally to promote and enable the
improvement of important research software through consultative advice; collaborative
partnerships; and long-term engagement.
From 2007-2010 I was Director of the OMII-UK, based at the University of Southampton,
which provides and supports free, open-source software for the UK e-Research community.
During this period, I was Technical Manager of the JISC-funded NeISS social simulation
project, and Project Manager of the JISC-funded ENGAGE initiative, which interviewed 50+
researchers across the UK and commissioned 14 exemplar projects which addressed the
current barriers to the use of e-Infrastructure in research domains including chemistry,
Earth systems modelling, digital humanities, and medicine.
I am or have been a member of the OGF, NGS, nanoCMOS and ADMIRE boards, and the Globus
Incubator Management Project.
Prior to this I was a Project Manager and Consultant at EPCC working primarily in the
Software Development Group. The focus of my work was in the area of Grid Computing; I led
the Data Access and Integration projects (OGSA-DAI, DAIT) at the centre and was the
development WP leader of the EC FP6 NextGRID project. I also worked with Scottish SMEs,
primarily on machine vision and image processing projects, and in areas as diverse as:
fishing net simulators, drilling control software, heart analysis, image archiving,
semiconductor probe inspection, genetic expression in mice and mushroom sorting.
I have taught courses on Practical Software Development, Scientific Visualisation and
Introduction to the Grid, and supervised various student projects for the EPCC Summer
Scholarship Programme, the MSc in High Performance Computing, the MSc in e-Science and
the Google Summer
of Code.
Previously, I gained experience in the Business Systems department of Elida Faberge and
was first at EPCC as a student on the Summer Scholarship Programme. I completed an MPhys
degree in Computational Physics from the University of Edinburgh.
In my spare time I play a lot of badminton, work to provide better
access to films across Scotland and am a trustee of the world’s oldest purpose-built
students union.