As Deputy Director at DiRAC, I am responsible for running the Project Office and directing our academic- and joint-industry training programmes. After nearly twenty years of professional administration experience, I returned to education as a mature student and gained a degree and PhD in astrophysics at UCL. Following five years of managing EC and EU industrial satellite projects for a large communications company in the City of London, I went back to UCL to join DiRAC.
My training programme work with DiRAC involves determining and assessing our user and employee development needs and creating programmes to address specific objectives. Working with both our industrial partners and our academic leads, we ensure our users and technical staff are able to make the best use of our machines by implementing a wide range of activities including providing a comprehensive online training programme, bootcamps, hackathons and topical training workshops. Our latest initiative is driving forward training in AI/ML for our users, both in terms of new technologies and the application of scientific methodology.
In managing the Project Office, I am responsible for planning and directing all non-technical activities of the facility, including monitoring and evaluation of key performance indicators, HR, operational budget funding bids and facility work-package definition. I jointly led the development of the business case for DiRAC3 which was awarded £20m from the UK Research & Innovation World Class Laboratories fund in 2020. I very much enjoy managing our projects through their development to successful completion and find the challenge, variety and fast-pace of DiRAC professionally very satisfying.