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Adaeze Ngozi Ohuoba, Academic Researcher, University of Leeds
Adaeze recently completed her PhD in Translation Studies at the University of Leeds, where she applied computational and machine learning methods to predict and analyse machine translation errors in English–Igbo medical texts, with particular attention to source-language features associated with high-risk failures. With a background in French language teaching and translation, she works at the intersection of Digital Humanities and linguistic research.
Her research focuses on low-resource languages and the development of evaluation and modelling approaches to improve the reliability of machine translation in high-stakes domains such as healthcare and public-service communication. She has contributed to interdisciplinary research on large language model interpretability and bias, and is interested in how digital research infrastructures can better support underrepresented languages.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adaeze-ngozi-nwosu-ohuoba-phd-103596107/
Anita Banerji, EDIA Research Lead, Software Sustainability Institute, University of Manchester
Anita is a research associate based in Computer Science at Manchester University. She leads the Inclusive RSE research work for the Software Sustainability Institute which explores Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in RSE. She advocates for approaches that draw on social science expertise and are co-produced with RSEs from underrepresented groups. Anita started her research career with a PhD in Medical Image Analysis and worked as an RSE in this area. She also has 5 years commercial software engineering experience. In her spare time, Anita is currently tackling the Bruch Violin Concerto and has just done her 100th parkrun.
https://www.software.ac.uk/publication/edi-research-strategy
Ann Gledson, Research Software Engineer, University of Manchester
Ann is a Research Software Engineer who splits her time between software engineering, data analysis, project management and training. She has conducted research since 2000 in the areas of data analysis, text mining, data visualisation and software engineering.
Ann is an advocate of established technical project management practices, including the use of agile and scrum and has co-designed and created an agile workflow training course, currently being delivered to the RSE team. She has also designed and delivered training courses, online videos and lectures relating to the production of sustainable software and open data.
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Ben Yarnall, Senior Policy Advisor, UKRI
Ben works as a Senior Policy Manager for the UK Research and Innovation Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) Programme. He has a background in the Medical Research Council, focused on DRI and high performance computing, and various charitable organisations focused on policy and patient pathways. Prior to this he entered the scientific world as a molecular biologists focused on membrane protein structures.
Bharti Gupta, Business Change Manager, The University of Manchester
Bharti is a senior technology and change professional working within Research IT, under the IT Services Directorate. She brings deep experience from delivering major, complex strategic transformation programmes, where she played a key role in driving large‑scale change across high‑impact environments. Her first stint with the University goes back to 2008 as a software engineer in the Faculty of Humanities, before moving to the private sector to work for HSBC and later Vodafone. Bharti has delivered FinTech-led strategies, transformational change, and optimised sustainable IT and business processes. Rejoining the University in 2023, Bharti excels in engaging and collaborating with cross-platform delivery partners and embedding AI-driven best practices in programme/project management and business transformation.
Brenda Phillips, Research Data Management Advisor, University of Leeds
Brenda is a data, governance, assurance, and research data management professional with experience across higher education, local government, and public-sector organisations. As Research Data Management Advisor at the University of Leeds since 2011, Brenda provides independent oversight of research governance, data protection, compliance, safeguarding, ethics, data and risk management. She has held roles across ethics, equality, research data management, governance, and oversight bodies, including university ethics committees, research data steering groups, and national data archive governance, and has chaired University staff and student EDI networks for over five years, exercising objective judgement, evidential assessment, and challenge. Key achievements include developing data governance frameworks, training courses, acting as a GDPR and data integrity champion, and providing independent data assurance for nationally funded research initiatives. Her earlier career includes senior advisory and compliance roles within local government, economic development partnerships, and programmes, and she brings impartial judgement, independence of thought, and commitment to fairness, transparency, and public trust.
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Christine Stawitz, Senior RSE and Manager, University of Birmingham
Christine is a Senior RSE and Manager at the University of Birmingham. Prior to becoming an RSE, Christine was a quantitative ecologist. She completed a PhD at the University of Washington, USA, and subsequently worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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Dave Love, Research Infrastructure Engineer, University of Manchester
Dave is a sometime experimental physicist, recycled into research computing for the last few decades. He started doing explicit research software engineering longer ago than most, as well as infrastructure work in various capacities, with particular interests in HPC, security, and people. He can talk about most areas of research computing support from long experience which he would like to pass on.
Diego Alonso Alvarez, Head of Research Software Engineering, Imperial College London
Dr Diego Alonso Alvarez is the Head of Research Software Engineering of the central RSE Team at Imperial College London, part of the Research Computing Service. He joined the team in 2018 as an RSE, and has led it since the end of 2021.
Diego studied Physical Sciences and then specialized in semiconductor quantum nanostructures during his PhD. During his postdoctoral research at Heriot Watt University (Edinburgh) first, and then at Imperial College London, his interests moved to novel solar energy concepts and solar cells. It is while performing this research that he developed a keen interest in software, which ended up covering all aspects of this work, from modelling and simulation of the solar cells, data analysis, and even data acquisition by automating the lab equipment.
Diego is a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, a member of the Society of Research Software Engineering, and a certified Carpentries Instructor, and is enthusiastic about promoting the benefits of good coding practices to other researchers. His technical expertise is centred around software sustainability and accessibility, especially in relation to the development of graphical user interfaces for research software, although lately his activities have focused more on team management and leaders.
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Emily C. Collins, Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Fellow, The University of Manchester
Dr. Emily C. Collins is an interdisciplinary Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) researcher. Her expertise span biomimetic, brain-based, therapeutic, and industrial robotics; HRI methodology development; and ethical and theoretical consideration of Robotics and AI (RAI). Her key research themes include trustworthiness and verification; responsibility and accountability; and the centrality of human psychology and socio-political factors to effective RAI deployment in the real world. She holds a Philosophy BA Honours degree from Cardiff University, UK. Before retraining as a scientist, Dr. Collins worked in the international cultural and heritage sector, in Kenya, and then Japan. Her Master Of Science degree in Experimental Psychology is from Sussex University, and she received her PhD in Psychology and Social Robotics from Sheffield Robotics at The University Of Sheffield, entitled ‘Towards Robot-Assisted Therapy: Identifying Mechanisms of Effect in Human-Biomimetic Robot Interaction.’ She spent a portion of her PhD at Osaka University, Japan, translating psychology metrics from English into Japanese to conduct cross-cultural HRI research. She is also a British Psychological Society Chartered Psychologist, and currently a Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Fellow at The University of Manchester.
https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/e.c.collins
Eva Fernandez Amez, Community Manager for Digital Research Infrastructure, Durham University
After completing a degree in Physics, Eva began her professional career as a Digital Developer in the Faculty of Science at Durham University. In this role, she worked closely with academic staff across multiple departments to create engaging digital learning and outreach materials, as well as to structure effective training resources. Over the past year, she has been the Community Manager for SHAREing, a UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure project, where she leads the Professional Skills Training Programme. Her work focuses on developing training and community activities for research technical professionals, particularly those working with advanced and accelerated computing. In parallel, she contributes to website development, graphic design, and videography, supporting communication, outreach, and dissemination activities across the project.
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Guilherme Fians, Research Development Officer and Open Research Fellow, University of Manchester
Guilherme is a Research Development Officer and Open Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. With a background in digital anthropology, Guilherme advises on external funding capture and conducts research on wiki outputs, digital platforms and academic recognition. His project asks: what happens when the content we edit on a Wikipedia entry reaches more people in one week than our journal articles do in five years - yet receives no recognition at all? He explores to what extent existing authorship models are fit for purpose in a scenario where impactful knowledge co-production largely takes place beyond traditional academic venues, analysing how institutions can more fully recognise research outputs that emerge from co-authorship with non-academic collaborators for the purposes of promotion, REF assessments, and public engagement/impact.
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Hayley Mills, Senior Metadata Manager, CLOSER, UCL
Hayley Mills is a Senior Metadata Manager at CLOSER, where she leads on content development for CLOSER Discovery (https://discovery.closer.ac.uk/), an ESRC funded research infrastructure which enables the research and data community to find, assess and understand UK longitudinal population study data.
She supports metadata strategy, collaborates with data managers across partner studies, and contributes to improving interoperability and documentation practices across the longitudinal research community. This includes involvement in the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) standard, where she has co-chaired working groups, and developed and delivered training.
Hayley previously worked at the British Oceanographic Data centre and is particularly interested in promoting metadata best practices and raising awareness of the importance of clear, sustainable metadata to support the long‑term value and reusability of research data.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/haymills/
Heather Kelly, Principal Research Infrastructure Developer, University College London
Heather is the team leader for HPC Solutions in Advanced Research Computing at UCL. This team is responsible for all user-facing aspects of the central UCL HPC clusters, including user support, research application installs, Slurm scheduler config, usage stats and reporting to governance.
Heather became team leader in 2022 after being a member of the team since 2017 and a contractor for the team since 2014. She has an MSc in HPC from EPCC in 2006.
Heather has been the named ops contact for the EPSRC/UKRI-funded Tier-2 clusters Thomas and then Young which are run on behalf of the Materials and Molecular Modelling Hub, and for the DSIT-funded Faraday Institution's cluster Michael, which focuses on batteries research. Her team will be supporting UCL's newly-announced National Compute Resource 'Charger'.
Holly Ranger, Head of Open Research, University Library, University of Sheffield
Holly is the Head of Open Research at the University of Sheffield. Holly leads the development and delivery of library services to support open research and research data management, and is particularly interested in research data stewardship, recognition mechanisms for research-enabling staff, and the formal representation and dissemination of 'non-traditional' research outputs. Holly also leads projects at the intersection of open research, research integrity, and research culture under the aegis of Sheffield's Office for Open Research and Scholarship.
Orcid profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8802-4589
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/themauvedesert.bsky.social
Sheffield Open Research: https://sheffield.ac.uk/openresearch/home/office-open-research-and-scholarship
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Isabella von Holstein, Imperial College London
Isabella has worked in research and research management for 20 years. She currently manages the UKRI-funded STEP-UP strategic technical platform at Imperial College London. This grant provides career support for digital Research Technical Professionals working in research software, data and computing infrastructure in London and the South East.
Isabella is co-investigator on Research Professional Futures, a 4-year £4.5M grant from the Research England Development Fund. This grant, which is professionally-led and research-informed, will deliver a sector-wide transformation in how research is supported, structured, and sustained. It focuses on Research Professionals, the specialist professional staff who play a vital role in delivering high-quality, ethical, and impactful research. She has led the PRISM Network, the national professional organisation for Professional Research Investment and Strategy Managers, for 3 years.
Isabella’s scientific background is interdisciplinary (archaeological biogeochemistry) and she has also worked in medicine, forensics, and engineering. She is deeply interested in interdisciplinarity, both of topic and of role, and how it interacts with psychological safety.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isabella-von-holstein-65419813a/
PRISM Network: https://www.pris-managers.ac.uk/
Research Professional Futures: https://www.tees.ac.uk/sections/news/pressreleases_story.cfm?story_id=8841
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James Byrne, Digital Research Compute Lead, University of Exeter
James is leading DRI compute developments at Exeter after almost a decade working in polar and environmental research compute. He is primarily a software engineer, and has extensive experience developing for small factor, mid-tier and large scale compute systems. Before joining the research community, he spent over a decade in industry in engineering and consultative roles. He is passionate for championing community-led development practices, and also interested in the responsible and sustainable systems design.
https://www.github.com/jimcircadian
https://www.inconsistentrecords.co.uk/
Jeremy Cohen, Advanced Research Fellow, Imperial College London
Jeremy is an Advanced Research Fellow in the Department of Computing and Director of Research Software Engineering Strategy at Imperial College London. He has a Computer Science background and has extensive experience of providing research software support to multi-disciplinary research projects across a range of domains.
Jeremy currently leads the EPSRC-funded "STEP-UP" regional strategic technical platform that is undertaking a range of work to develop the community, skills and career pathways for digital Research Technical Professionals (dRTPs) - people who work with research software, research data and research computing infrastructure. As part of this work, STEP-UP is running a dRTP mentoring scheme, a Research Technical Champions programme and a placement scheme across its four partner institutions.
Jiguang Li, Assistant Professor, Northumbria University
Dr. Jiguang Li received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA. He is currently an Assistant Professor in School of Computer Sciences, Northumbria University. He worked as Research Fellow in The North of England Robotics Innovation Centre (NERIC) of University of Salford. His research interests include but not limited to Nanoelectronics, Sensing, Robotics and automation, Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, AI for science and so on.
Research page: https://researchportal.northumbria.ac.uk/en/persons/jiguang-li/
Jools Kasmire, Computational Social Science Training Lead, UK Data Service / University of Manchester
Jools researches and teaches on how to use new forms of data for social scientists with the UK Data Service and the Cathie Marsh Institute at the University of Manchester.
They approach this task as an interesting combination of thinking like a computer (essential for data sciences) and thinking like a human (essential for social sciences) in the context of complex adaptive systems. They are deeply committed to equality, diversity and inclusivity.
BlueSky: @jools-cyborg.bsky.social
Juan Wang, Lecturer, University of York
Dr. Juan Wang is a Lecturer of the University of York at the Department of Computer Science. Juan’s background is Software Engineering, mainly Software Testing. She is also interested in Natural Language Processing, web scraping, ontology, etc.
Juan’s PhD thesis is User Review Analysis for Requirement Elicitation. It is a novel framework with Natural Language Processing techniques driven by linguistic rules under the context of requirement elicitation. Driven by well managed linguistic rules, this framework can yield very good performance, and let you have control over the details of the whole data flow. The computation cost is very low, which was done in an ordinary computer. She is very keen to have opportunities to develop this framework further, which could serve research communities and industries in all walks of life in the future.
Justin Clark-Casey, BioFAIR Architect, BioFAIR
Justin is the BioFAIR Architect, having spearheaded the foundational technical work required to turn BioFAIR into an operational BioCommons. He leads the Architecture Working Group (AWG), guiding the technical decisions and design of the BioFAIR Technical Platform. A strong advocate for the integration of Artificial Intelligence in scientific research, Justin envisions a near future where scientists collaborate primarily with personal AI assistants rather than traditional user interfaces. To prepare for this, his architectural strategy centers on making AI agents the primary consumers of BioFAIR's services, notably by mandating that all features are accessible via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). He also actively contributes to the AIBIO AI-Ready Data Working Group to help create a catalogue of AI-ready life sciences datasets.
Prior to this, Justin served as the EOSC Programme Manager at EMBL-EBI, where he co-led the €5m Archiver consortium to incubate cloud-based scientific data archiving services. His background spans over 15 years in global DRIs and open-source software. This includes serving as Technical Project Lead for the Human Cell Atlas and as a core developer for the OpenSimulator project, where he guided a worldwide team of over 180 developers.
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Liyuan Zhu, PhD candidate, Newcastle University
Liyuan Zhu is a PhD candidate at Newcastle University. She received her Master’s degree in Data Science at Durham University. Funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Patient Safety Research Collaborations (PSRC), she has been working in the theme of data science and AI for Multiple Long-Term Conditions (MLTCs) and Polypharmacy, aiming to develop, validate and test innovations, approaches and interventions that have the potential to lead to improvements in patient safety and the safety of health and care services.
Using the large-scale national EHR data, Liyuan works closely with interdisciplinary scientists. Her works include modelling of MLTCs and health trajectories, data-driven approaches for polypharmacy management and MLTCs-Polypharmacy dynamics, predictive and causal machine learning, and polypharmacy in inflammatory skin disease (psoriasis). By identifying prescribing patterns and predicting their impact on patient outcomes, her goal is to generate actionable insights that support safer, more personalised and more effective healthcare delivery.
Louise Saul, Network+ Coordinator, University of Southampton/CaSDaR
After completing her PhD in crystallography, Louise worked as both a technician and a post‑doctoral research fellow, specialising in the interactions of immune-system proteins involved in immune priming. After a career break spent working as a teacher to support her family, she later moved into research culture and infrastructure roles, serving as an Open Research Coordinator and Administrator with the UK Reproducibility Network’s Open Research Programme and the Physical Sciences Data Infrastructure (PSDI) programme. She now works as the Network+ Coordinator for the Careers and Skills for Data-driven Research (CaSDaR) Network.
Louise’s interests centre on skills development and community engagement, with commitment to highlighting the essential expertise and value that research‑enabling staff bring to the research ecosystem. She is also involved in research exploring the motivations behind information‑sharing practices.
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Dr Martin J. Turner, Research Relationship Manager for IT Services, University Of Manchester
Recent secondments as Visualisation Director for the Harwell Imaging Partnership at STFC/RAL and as Group Leader within the Scientific Computing Division in STFC/DL and now continual management of the national Computed Tomography imaging network (CCPi.ac.uk 2012-2026).
Research interests cover a broad background, specialising in visualization and mathematical topics associated with video, image and signal creation, analysis, processing and presentation. This has resulted in a short-term Fellowship with British Telecom, a published book Fractal Geometry in Digital Imaging by Academic Press, a series of editorial roles, over 100 peer reviewed publications; and supervised to completion twenty successful MPhil/PhD students. Teaching has covered all academic levels from undergraduate to postgraduate; and is an Honorary Lecturer in Computer Science emphasizing at the MSc and PhD level. A University EIM (Emergency Incident Manager) and IT Services ITEM manager.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-turner-b593556/
Martin Callaghan, Staff Tutor, The Open University
Martin Callaghan is an academic in the School of Computing and Communications at The Open University. His background spans over 30 years in industry, consultancy, and academia, with a primary focus on High-Performance Computing (HPC) and research software engineering.
In industry roles, Martin established HPC services and infrastructure teams and in consultancy, he specialises in the intersection of large-scale data centre operations and artificial intelligence. His work focuses on the environmental impact of AI, specifically addressing the energy demands of modern computational infrastructure and the development of more sustainable, resource-efficient AI models. He holds a PhD in Computer Science with a focus on multi-document summarisation.
https://profiles.open.ac.uk/martin-callaghan
Matt Probert, Director of N8 CIR / Professor of Computational Physics, N8 CIR / University of York
Matt Probert is Professor of Computational Physics at the University of York and has been the Director of the N8 Centre of Excellence in Computationally Intensive Research (N8 CIR) since its creation in 2018. He was the chair of the EPSRC-funded High End Computing Consortia (UKCP) from 2007 - 2022, and has also been a member of the ARCHER2 Science Board, and the EPSRC HPC SAC. He is a lead developer of the widely-used first principles materials modelling code 'CASTEP' and uses this to study the structure and dynamical properties of matter. Matt regularly lectures on HPC and first principles material modelling at the University of York and elsewhere.
Michael Bearpark, Academic Director of Research Computing, Imperial College London
Michael is a professor of computational chemistry at Imperial College London and Academic Director of Research Computing Services. He’s part of the STEP-UP regional and SCALE-UP national initiatives which support the development of communities, skills and career opportunities for digital Research Technical Professionals (dRTPs) across software, data and infrastructure. He's also part of Imperial's Open Research, FAIR Data and Cyber Security groups.
Mike Simpson, Research Software Engineer, Newcastle University
Mike was a founding member of the RSE Team at Newcastle University and has been working in RSE-related roles for over a decade. His background is in video game development, and he does a lot of work in interactive data visualisation. He is also Trustee and Vice-President of the Society of RSE and a 2025 SSI Fellow, continuing the conversation around mental health in the research software community.
Linktr: https://linktr.ee/mdsimpson
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Neil Dullaway, Head of Partnerships and Business Engagement, Lancaster University
Nick Syrotiuk, Research Data Manager, Durham University
Nick hails from Western Canada and has supported researchers with Research Data Management at Durham University for over eight years. Nick is a strong advocate for improving Data Management Plans and increasing the visibility and impact of research by publishing research data in a data repository. Before joining Durham, Nick worked at the UK Data Service in Manchester for fourteen years. In Manchester, Nick worked his way up to become Technical Lead for the International Data Team running the UKDS.Stat data service. Previous to that role, Nick assisted the Copac/CURL Team at the University of Manchester with the design of the CURL/RLUK MARC21 database of bibliographic records.
Orcid identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7367-4976
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Oscar Seip, Research Community Manager, University of Manchester - Software Sustainability Institute
Oscar is a Research Community Manager at the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI), based at the University of Manchester, where he manages the SSI Fellowship Programme; a community of 250+ ambassadors of good practice in research software. Originally from the Netherlands, he previously worked across the arts and humanities as an academic researcher and theatre producer before moving into the research software and community building space.
Oscar holds a PhD in Italian Studies from the University of Manchester, an MA in Cultural and Intellectual History from the Warburg Institute, and postgraduate degrees in Theatre Studies from the University of Amsterdam, and held postdoctoral positions at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome and the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. He also holds qualifications in software development, project management, and an Associate Fellowship from Advance Higher Education.
Oscar was a co-founder of the Manchester Centre for Correspondence Studies and led workshops on digital tools. He also contributed to key advisory reports for funders, including ‘Sustaining Digital Humanities in the UK’ and ‘Towards a National Research Software Engineering Capability in Arts and Humanities Research: a Roadmap’.
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Paul Richards, Open Research Strategy Lead, UK Research and Innovation
Paul is an Open Research Strategy Lead in UKRI’s Research and Innovation Culture and Environment Strategy Team, where he leads and coordinates UKRI, UK and international policy, strategy and engagement activities to champion and support open research. A current focus is leading the development UKRI's new research data policy. Prior to joining UKRI, Paul managed policy and public affairs for the Microbiology Society.
Phil Reed, Research Community and Training Manager, The University of Manchester
Research Community and Training Manager at the eScience Lab, working with European and global partners such as ELIXIR to further facilitate and encourage FAIR and reproducible research practices. Projects and products include TeSS and mTeSS-X federated training registry, RO-Crate metadata middleware, FAIRDOM consortium of services for research data management, Bioschemas for markup of data, software and training.
Open Research Fellow 2026 at The University of Manchester, working with dRTPs (digital research technical professionals) to formalise and professionalise roles and careers. Software Sustainability Institute Fellow 2025, working on the DIRECT Framework of skills and competencies for dRTPs at a national level.
Previous roles include Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee member, Teaching and Learning Librarian, Data Specialist, Research Associate and Software Developer. Qualifications include Senior Fellowship of AdvanceHE, Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education and BSc Computer Science (1st Class Honours).
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Ramiro Bravo, Research Data Manager, University of Manchester
Ramiro is Research Data Manager for the Core Facilities Technology Platforms and the MRC Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE) in Exposome Immunology, a joint initiative between the University of Manchester and the University of Oxford within the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health. With a background in biomedical engineering and computer science, he brings both technical depth and cross-disciplinary perspective to research data management/stewardship supporting cutting-edge research and cross-institutional collaboration. He works towards a strategic integrated research data infrastructure that underpins advanced biomedical technologies including genomics, bioimaging, electron microscopy, and Mass Spectrometry.
Ramiro collaborates with Core Facility managers, Principal Investigators, Research IT, Open Research Office, and institutional strategy programmes to design scalable storage, compute, and metadata ecosystems for complex, multimodal datasets. His work ensures alignment with FAIR data principles, Open Research, and regulatory frameworks including GDPR and Good Clinical Practice. He actively promotes researcher-centred workflows and the adoption of tools such as Open Science Framework(OSF.io) and protocols.io strengthen research data management, transparency and reproducibility.
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ramiro-bravo
Ric Campbell, Data Scientist/ Manager, N8 RDM Theme Lead, University of Sheffield
Having previously worked as a data steward at the University of Sheffield, to support the adoption of FAIR practices for research data and software, Ric currently works as a data scientist/ manager, with a focus on routine health data, helping researchers reduce the time in accessing the correct data and improving compliance with ethical and data governance requirements. Ric is also RDM Theme lead for the N8 CIR and has set up a data stewardship network for the N8 research partnership.
https://n8cir.org.uk/our-networks/data-stewards-network/
Robert Andrews, Senior Lecturer, Cardiff University
Robert Andrews is a Fellow of BioFAIR, a £34 million, five-year UKRI-funded digital infrastructure initiative designed to make life sciences research data more "Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable" (FAIR). He is a member of the management board of ELIXIR-UK, a national organisation of 28 UK universities and institutes bringing together life science data and resources from across UK and Europe. He has co-led the ELIXIR-UK Data Steward Fellowship in the life sciences and co-leads a national, grassroots Data Stewardship Club with a membership of 50+ international universities/institutes.
Roberto Villegas-Diaz, Senior Research Software Engineer, University of Liverpool
Roberto Villegas-Diaz is a Senior Research Software Engineer at the University of Liverpool, where he works with the DataSHIELD team, a federated data analysis platform. He currently contributes to the DARE UK–funded FOCUS-5 project, helping to advance trustworthy federated data infrastructures that enable responsible data use across institutional boundaries.
His technical and research interests centre on high-performance computing and its role in driving innovative solutions for data-intensive research. He focuses on improving the efficiency, scalability and robustness of data operations, enabling researchers to work with increasingly large and complex datasets.
Roberto has also collaborated with the Research Objects team on the development of rocrateR, an R package that provides tools for creating and manipulating RO-Crates to support reproducibility, interoperability and rich research metadata practices.
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Sam Bland, Technical Specialist Software Developer/N8 CIR RSE theme lead, University of York
Sam has provided software and digital technology expertise to a wide range of research projects from web based citizen science to the use of high performance computers.
He has a background and working interest in using digital technology to enable all stakeholders in research to engage with the complex problems we face. He has worked with a wide range of research stakeholders including the researchers themselves; commercial and industry sectors; digital research professionals and most recently teachers and pupils through the Schools' Air quality Monitoring for Health and Education (SAMHE) and CHILI projects.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-bland/
Samantha Finnigan, RSE Team Lead, Durham University Advanced Research Computing
Samantha is RSE Team Lead and Senior Research Software Engineer within Advanced Research Computing (ARC) at Durham University, leading a team of RSEs supporting computationally intensive research across the institution.
Recent project work spans multiple domains. In engineering, she supports the Metamaterials Genome project, including infrastructure for AI-assisted workflows. In archaeology and the digital humanities, she has developed HPC pipelines for orienting, lighting and batch-rendering ~2,600 photogrammetric 3D models of Palaeolithic handaxes for an AHRC-funded project, contributed to the deployment of a web platform hosting the associated artefact database, and delivered Whisper AI model HPC transcription work for the Enduring Voices digital storytelling project.
Samantha is actively involved in the N8 Research Partnership, including supporting N8CIR internships at ARC, and contributes to the RSE community through Carpentries-based training and a recently published CCP-AHC case study. She holds a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction with a specialism in Smart Buildings, and retains research interests in sustainability and social justice. She is co-chair of Durham University's staff LGBT+ Network and is passionate about EDI and mentoring in research and technology.
Sam Haynes, Senior Bioinformatician, Quadram Institute
Sam is a senior Bioinformatician at the Quadram Institute and BioFAIR Fellow. He works at the interface of biology and computing infrastructure. He manages a Galaxy interface to the Norwich Bioscience Institutes HPC, private cloud service, JIRA instance for service management, and several biology-based data management platforms. Sam previously worked at EPCC - the UK's centre for Supercomputing and Data Science.
Santiago Molina, Head of Data Strategy, ESRC
Santiago is Head of Data Strategy at the Economic and Social Research Council, where he works across major ESRC data infrastructures to support a coordinated and effective data strategy. His role focuses on strengthening collaboration, addressing shared challenges and ensuring that ESRC investments continue to deliver high quality, robust and trusted data for the research community.
Originally from Mexico, Santiago has worked across North and Latin America in several policy think tanks, with a focus on technology policy, digital transformation and the role of science and technology in economic development. His work in these areas has centred on improving the conditions for research, innovation and the responsible use of data and digital technologies.
Before joining ESRC, Santiago served as Senior Policy Manager for the UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure Programme. In that role, he contributed to the development of a more coherent and future oriented digital ecosystem to support UK research, working closely with stakeholders across government, research organisations and national digital services.
He brings experience in strategy development, policy design and cross-sector collaboration, along with a strong interest in enabling data driven research.
Sara Villa, OLS community and training lead / The Turing Way Community Management WG chair
Sara is a researcher and science community builder dedicated to make science more equitable, responsible and efficient.
She is particularly interested in making communities sustainable and efficient, improving governance processes with a people-centric approach. As Training Lead at OLS, she coordinate OLS's open science cohort-based training programme and leads the rest of the training catalogue with a strong focus on sustainable Leadership.
Her experience as experimental researcher and bioinformatician for more than 15 years, has given her essential insights on leadership, organisational management and team development that she's now bringing into different research communities.
Her work supports different scientific communities, like OLS, The Turing Way, RCM Cooperative and Data Science for Health Equity, where she leads community building strategy and guides governance work. Always putting people first.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/s-villa/
Saranjeet Kaur Bhogal, Research Software Engineer, Imperial College London
Saranjeet is a Research Software London at Imperial College London. She is a 2023 International Fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute.
Saskia Lawson-Tovey, Research Fellow/Data Steward, University of Manchester
Saskia is an experienced research fellow and data steward, SSI fellow, a previous University of Manchester Open Research Fellow, and an ELIXIR-UK FAIR Data Stewardship Fellow working in the Centre for Musculoskeletal Research, Division of Musculoskeletal and Dermatological Sciences at the University of Manchester. Saskia’s work focuses on data stewardship, research data management, and open science.
Saskia is also the co-lead of two national working groups: the ELIXIR-UK Human Data Community and the NIHR Musculoskeletal Translational Research Collaboration Real-World Data Harmonisation working group.
Simon Burbidge, RSE Team co-lead and HPC Expert, DiRAC
Simon is a leading member of the HPC community in the UK, with a long and highly successful career in HPC in both industry and research. He is also a consultant for HPC and Research Computing in University, Research and technical environments. Simon is RSE team leader at DiRAC, working with the RSE group on DiRAC projects and benchmarking and performance monitoring/measurement. He supports DiRAC developments in energy management, data storage and future software development for pre-exascale and new technology. Simon was previously Director of Advanced Computing Research Centre at the University of Bristol and HPC Lead at Imperial College London, with earlier industry experience in the seismic industry and with a leading computer supplier to the education sector in the UK. He maintains a keen interest in technology and methods for computing in research. Collaborations and joint ventures with vendors and developers and with research communities form a central part of his work. This has included ARM technologies, interconnects, storage and software development. Simon participates in community and standards groups, including the HPC-SIG and CIUK and international meetings such as ISC and SC and special interest groups and BoFs such as parallel programming and scheduling.
Skylar Wan, Lecturer in International Business, University of Leeds
Skylar is a Lecturer in International Business at the University of Leeds. Her research applies big data analytics to explore the micro-foundations and dynamics of international business, with findings published in Financial Times 50-ranked journals and supported by funding from the Worldwide Universities Network.
Skylar's work is strongly grounded in industry and policy engagement, with close ties to biotechnology multinationals and the Life Sciences Group at the UK Department for Business and Trade.
Stephen Fox, Research Data Manager, University of Glasgow
Dr Stephen Fox is the Research Data Manager for the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences (MVLS) at the University of Glasgow, working within the Research Computing as a Service (RCaaS) team. He specialises in research data management, digital research infrastructure and supporting data‑intensive life sciences research. His work includes storage strategy, data governance, FAIR practices and developing sustainable workflows linked to HPC, secure hosting and computational environments.
Stephen’s career spans over a decade across major UK institutions, including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Imperial College London, Nottingham Trent University and Cardiff University. Before moving into digital infrastructure roles, he worked in genomics, microbiology, antimicrobial resistance and cancer biology, contributing to multi‑institutional projects.
He also plays a key role in shaping MVLS data management strategy, developing scalable approaches to data handling, storage and long‑term stewardship. This includes supporting discussions on storage architecture, advising on service design and enabling adoption of solutions such as OMERO for imaging data. He contributes to a unified enterprise storage solution that will replace the current mix of legacy and ad‑hoc systems across the college.
https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/rcaas/team/
Stephen Longshaw, Director CoSeC, UKRI STFC
Stephen is Director of the Computational Science Centre for Research Communities (CoSeC) at UKRI STFC. He works at UKRI's National Labs with CoSeC supporting and collaborating with computational communities across UKRI's remit. He has a background in Computer Science and over a decade of experience in application-driven modelling and simulation. As CoSeC Director, Stephen directly leads a team of Research Technical Professionals with a large variety of skills ranging from applied domain-specific research through to professional roles. His role also requires he is closely involved in wider strategic and policy-driven work across UKRI where he draws on the experience and knowledge of the large number of senior academics within the communities he works with.
https://www.sc.stfc.ac.uk/team/?searchquery=stephen-longshaw-dr
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Thomas Flynn, Research Software Engineer, Durham University
Thomas is an early career Research Software Engineer in Advanced Research Computing at Durham University. He works on the SHAREing (Skills Hub for Accelerated Research Environments inspiring the next generation) DRI project with a focus on building a software performance assessment service in the UK.
Tony Burdett, Director, BioFAIR
Tony is the Director of BioFAIR, a federated digital research infrastructure which aims to support the sharing, management and reuse of life science data. He is an experienced leader in bioinformatics, specialising in FAIR data management and delivery of research-enabling services for the life sciences. Tony has significant experience working in international scientific collaborations around the development of innovative data solutions - including the Human Cell Atlas and GA4GH. He has previously held roles as a Team Leader at the European Bioinformatics Institute, where he was responsible for the European Nucleotide Archive and the BioSamples Database, and as the Lead of the ELIXIR Interoperability Platform.
Tristan Martin, Open Research Librarian, University of Manchester
Tristan is an Open Research Librarian in the Research Data Management team, Office for Open Research, University of Manchester Library.
He is the team lead for research data stewardship, which includes acting as the group lead for the Research IT CaDiR (Computation and Data in Research) online Research Data Stewardship Community, lead organiser for the Research Data Conversations event series, and coordinator for the Research Lifecycle Programme Data Stewardship project. He also contributes to the DMP review service and both the University Researcher Development training programme and the Library My Research Essentials workshop series, including Introduction to Research Data Stewards: A key role in modern research.
Before joining the University of Manchester Library in 2018 Tristan completed a PhD in Politics at Newcastle University.