Who's Who

Neil Geddes Plenary 1
Neil Geddes obtained his doctorate in High Energy Particle Physics (HEP) from the University of Oxford in 1986. Thereafter he joined the Particle Physics Department at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) where he remained until 2001. During this time Neil spent periods at CERN and SLAC. Throughout his career Neil has had a strong interest in distributed computing and in April 2001 he joined the UK's Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) to direct their e-science programme, which included the creation of the LHC Computing Grid Project. He now leads the e-Science Department in the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), with responsibility scientific ICT in support of the facilities operated by STFC and a number of national initiative such as the National Grid Service and the MRC Data Support Service.Neil is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, has over 500 refereed publications covering particle physics and computing.
Christine Sexton Plenary 2
Christine arrived in Sheffield in 1974 to do a degree in Anatomy (quickly changed to Genetics), and completed a PhD in Genetics in 1980. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher for 3 years before deciding that she wanted slightly more stability than 3 year contracts. An appointment in the Academic Secretary´s Office provided a good grounding for a career in University Administration, and over the next few years Christine moved through a variety of posts, including Management Information Officer to Undergraduate Student Officer. Her first senior appointment was Head of Administration in the Faculty of Medicine where she was responsible for all support to the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry and then Nursing and Midwifery. In 1996 a major reorganisation of the Central Services created a new Department of Corporate Information, which later merged with Academic Computing Services to become CiCS, to which she was appointed Director.
Ray Fleming Plenary 3
Ray Fleming is the Education Marketing Manager for Microsoft UK, and has spent 25 years working within the education ICT industry. Much of Ray’s work involves bridging the gap between the technology industry and education – helping each side to better understand the other, and creating stories that help both sides to discuss the impact of ICT upon education, now and in the future.
In the past, Ray has been a columnist for the Times Education Supplement, won Computer Weekly’s “Public Sector Blogger of the Year Award” in 2008. At Microsoft, as part of his role, Ray writes a number of education blogs and has spoken at a range of educational conferences – focusing on the significance of ICT to learners and teachers, and the role it will play in the transforming education.
Adam Marshall Workshop 01
Adam Marshall is the WebLearn service manager and as such coordinates every aspect of the University's VLE. In the past Adam has coded in Java, Occam, Fortran, HPF and Ada and was a member of JTC1/SC22/WG5. He has worked with electronic student systems and automated software testing, written on-line courses and has led a number of national JISC projects releated to learning technologies. He once had a Single Of The Week in the NME.
Katherine Ferguson Workshop 02
Katherine Ferguson has worked for the University libraries since 2000. Her role has variously included user support, system administration, and developing web applications, databases, and client software. Recently she has been working with the Bodleian Library's Inventory Control Project, who are barcoding books destined for the Bodleian's new Book Storage Facility.
Rob Bristow Workshop 03

Rob Bristow is a Programme Manager in the JISC Innovation Group with specific responsibility for Green ICT. Rob has worked for JISC for 2 1/2 years and his other areas of responsibility have included Shared Services and Cloud Computing. Rob has worked in Higher Education for 11 years, initially as Web manager at Cass Business School, City University, London and later as Information Services Manager at the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol.
Sarah Lawson Workshop 04
Sarah is currently the IT Coordinator at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit at the Old Road Campus and is working on projects to help the Trials Unit comply with various quite onerous compliance regulations. Formerly IT Manager for Harris Manchester College she has a broad understanding of University IT and has witnessed how the world of IT Governance is gradually becoming more and more important for all IT professionals.
Jon Warbrick Workshop 05
Jon Warbrick has worked for the University of Cambridge Computing Service for the last 10 years, where he takes an interest in information delivery, particularly over the web, and in authentication and authorisation issues. Prior to this he worked for a Cambridge-based commercial ISP, and was once Computer Manager at Cambridge's St John's College.
Miranda Llewellyn Workshop 06
Miranda Llewellyn is Programme Manager for the Office of the Director of IT. The majority of her time is currently focused on the University's Information Security Best Practice (ISBP) project (http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/odit/projects/ISBP/) which seeks to build on the 2009 Self-Assessment exercise and provide consolidated University policy on information security. Miranda manages the activity and provides advice on communications and governance issues. She has a degree in Law (University College London) and a degree in Communication (Oxford Brookes University). Before working with the Director of IT and OUCS, Miranda worked for the Oxford Internet Institute.
Jonathan Ashton Workshop 06
Jonathan has worked for OxCERT for 5 years now and, as well as the day to day activities involved in protecting the integrity of the backbone network, he has also played a key role in a number of other projects including managing a trial of PGP Universal Server for email encryption and the ongoing automated malware analysis lab. Jonathan is also an active member of the ICTF and is enjoying his second year on the ICTF steering committee. Via the ICTF he also set up and chairs the Information Security Advisory Group which has been responsible for leading the way in the recent Information Security Best Practice Self-Assessment exercise. Jonathan has a keen interest in Information Security and is currently studying, part time, for an MSc in the subject at Royal Holloway University.
David Birds Workshop 07
David Birds is the Data Centre Manager at OUCS. He did his undergraduate studies at King’s College in London and came as a post-grad to Green College (now Green Templeton) in 1995. He was the IBM Computing Scholar whilst at Green College and became the IT Manager at Oriel College in 1998. He remained there until 2002 when he was poached to become Systems Manager at JBrand Ltd, a Systems Integration Company based in the West-End of London. Working alongside clients such as Kingfisher, Waitrose & John Lewis, M&S & Odeon Cinemas. Also managing School wireless installations with Research Machines and Trapeze Wireless Networks. Project managed a 30,000 square foot data centre installation providing client gold builds at JBrand’s facility in Runcorn including all structured cabling and networking infrastructure and connectivity to clients private networks. The lure of the University drew him back and he has been at OUCS since January 2009, looking after the existing OUCS Data Centre at 13 Banbury Road, project managing a refurbishment of this facility and the fit out and management of the new shared data centre on the University Science Area.
Gordon Ross Workshop 08

Gordon Ross is the Telecomms Systems Manager at Cambridge University. Gordon has worked at Cambridge for two years and is responsible for the running of the Call Manager phone system and associated infrastructure. Prior to working at Cambridge, Gordon worked for 16 years in the public sector, responsible for telecomms, data networking and servers.
Alan Hillyer Workshop 08

Alan Hillyer is Head of Telecoms at Oxford University. Alan has worked at Oxford for five years and is part of the Networks and Telecoms Group within OUCS managing a team of 10 Telecoms staff. Prior to Oxford Alan had  worked at Imperial College (1982 – 2000) and was involved in writing and negotiating a PFI contract where the voice service was outsourced to Ericsson with the staff being TUPE’d. In 2002 Alan took a redundancy package and started his own telecoms services and consultancy firm. He has been involved in IT and Telecoms for over 25 years.
Bruce Beckles Workshop 09
Bruce Beckles has worked in IT support in the academic and charitable sectors for about 15 years, prior to which he read Mathematics at Cambridge. For the past 5+ years he has worked for the University of Cambridge Computing Service supporting researchers, particularly in the sciences, in their use of IT for academic research. A significant part of that has involved determining researchers' IT requirements and exploring how best these can be met by central IT services in the University.
David Spence Workshop 09
David Spence works for the Oxford e-Research Centre on the National Grid Service and Neurohub projects. He has worked for OeRC for two and a half years. This included 2 years as a joint e-Research Development Officer with the University of Reading, which included discovering and addressing researchers requirements in the area of e-Research and developing and promoting research computing services.
Jemima Spare Workshop 10
Jemima Spare is the IT Support Officer for (OU)Telecoms. Her primary job is looking after the servers and pcs belonging to Telecoms, but she has also got involved in working on projects such as the WebEx trial.
Tony Brett Workshop 11
Tony is the Head of IT Support Staff services in OUCS and has a passion for helping ITSS to be the best they can in terms of career progression, excellence in service management and delivery and adoption of best practice. A former Department and then College IT Manager in Oxford Tony has unique insight into ICT Service provision in this complex collegiate University.
Andrew Cormack Workshop 12
Andrew Cormack joined JANET(UK) as Head of CERT in 1999. Since 2003 he has been Chief Regulatory Adviser, responsible for keeping the company and its customers informed about policy and regulatory issues relating to the use of network services in education and research organisations. He works with other national and international organisations on Internet regulation and self-regulation, and was recently elected chair of the Funding Council of the Internet Watch Foundation.
Tim Fernando Workshop 13

Tim Fernando is Project/Service Manager for JISC Institutional Innovation Project 'Erewhon' and 'Mobile Oxford'. His interest in computing was first sparked when his father worked at UC Berkeley during the early nineties where he was exposed to the up and coming culture of Silicon Valley. He later studied Computer Science and Avionics, spending much of his spare time tinkering with mobile phones and cameras. Arriving back to Oxford he spent some time working on the OUCS Help Desk before moving onto his current job with Erewhon.
Stuart Anderson Workshop 14
Stuart is a Senior Systems Engineer specialising in High Performance Computing, Server, Storage, Quicktime streaming and OS X architecture and brings a wealth of education experience to the table.
Robert Zachlod Workshop 15
Robert Zachlod works as a technical support engineer at Computing Services (OUCS). Rob has a technical background and his areas of expertise are systems engineering and computer networks. In 2009 he joined the low-carbon ICT team to support the green desktop computing services being developed at OUCS. Rob’s effort has meant more than 20 groups have now started implementing their own green IT initiatives.
Howard Noble Workshop 15
Howard Noble leads requirements gathering and analysis projects for Computing Services (OUCS) at the University of Oxford. He conducts and interviews, surveys, software prototyping exercises to find out how to better support research, teaching and learning. Howard has been working in the area of green computing since 2006. He initiated the low-carbon ICT project to deliver tools, techniques and advice to help IT staff improve desktop computer power management. Howard is currently writing a new research proposal in collaboration with academics from across the University focused on the social aspects of green computing.
Marko Jung Workshop 16
Workshop 17
Marko Jung is as a senior systems engineer within the NSMS team at the Computing Services (OUCS). After a friend introduced him to SunOS 5 in early 90's, his interest in Unix operating systems made him explore dozens of Unix derivatives. 20 years later he is still fascinated by world's biggest open text adventure. Besides his duties as member of the NSMS Mac specialist team, Marko tries to have an impact on the University's carbon footprint by advocating low-carbon computing and supporting OUCS green IT initiatives.
James Partridge Workshop 16

James Partridge has been well-known as the main OUCS Mac specialist for the last 6 years and is now a member of the NSMS Mac team. Over this period he has seen Mac use across the University increase dramatically. He now works both as an Apple system administrator within OUCS and as a consultant on Apple-related projects in the University.

Jon Hutchings Workshop 17
Jon Hutchings works as a senior systems engineer within NSMS - OUCS' consultancy team. Having worked for OUCS for 14 years Jon is one of the lead members of NSMS virtualization team and is a vmware certified professional, who has used vmware esx since 2.5. His interest in operating system design and storage solutions is particularly useful when addressing some of the issues that arise when systems are virtualised.
Panel chaired by Janet McKnight Workshop 18

The panel will include:

  • Neil Jefferies (Research & Revelopment Project Manager for the Bodleian Libraries)
  • Sally Rumsey (Service & Development Manager for ORA; PI for the BRII project)
  • Howard Noble (Project Manager in the Learning Technologies Group at OUCS; recently ran the Low Carbon ICT project)
  • Graham Klyne (Senior Computing Officer for the Image Bioinformatics Research Group in Zoology; also working on other Semantic Web projects such as CLAROS)

and will be chaired by Janet McKnight (Web developer on the Information Systems Development Team in OUCS, working on projects such as the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names and TEI-ISO)
Charlie Crichton Workshop 19
Charles Crichton works in the Computing Laboratory as part of the CancerGrid Team. His main interest is in modelling the context in which data is collected so that it can be easily and reliably reused. Semi and fully-automatic interoperability of clinical study data is of particular interest, especially where it can help to improve the process of meta-analysis of multiple studies. He is helping colleagues in the Oxford Vaccine Group, the PTCRI, the Oxford e-Research Centre's VRE-CI project and Cancer Research UK to semantically annotate their data so that it can be understood and reused.
John Peachey Workshop 19
John Peachey moved to the Computing Lab over a year ago from Jesus College, where he spent over 7 years as the Computing Officer. His main responsibilities are Windows Sysadmin, development of Altiris Deployment Solution and more recently virtualisation with VMWare's free ESXi server.
Jeremy Chalk Workshop 19
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Sheena MacRae Workshop 20
Sheena MacRae has worked for the University of Cambridge Computing Service for 7 years. She established the Assistive Technology Support service 5 years ago to provide technical support for University staff and students with disabilities working closely with Occupational Health and the Disability Resource Centre. She now runs regular Work Related Upper Limb Disorder advice and support drop-in sessions, 1:1 and group software training sessions, an evaluation system for specialist ergonomic input devices and a laptop loan system for students awaiting equipment from a DSA application.
Bob Franklin Workshop 21
Bob Franklin has been Major Network Projects Manager at the Cambridge Computing Service for the last three years before which he was based at the University of Reading.
Guy Edwards Workshop 21

Guy Edwards has been a Network Development Officer at Oxford University Computing Services for the last three years.
John Ireland Workshop 22
John Ireland works in the Systems Development and Support Team at OUCS, where he is involved in the design and delivery of central University services such as Webauth. He has also experienced the "other side" having previously worked at Jesus College: consuming central services and serving a much more local user-base.
Amber Miro Workshop 23
Amber is Assistant Director, IT Services at London School of Economics, where she is responsible for the strategic development and management of all IT user services, including training and support. Prior to joining LSE in 2000, Amber enjoyed a ten year career in training and development, which eventually led her into IT. She now takes a keen interest in how technology can be used to facilitate effective learning.
Jon Holgate Workshop 24
Jon Holgate is head of the Clinical School Computing Service.
Rob Smith Workshop 24
Rob Smith is a Windows Specialist in the Desktop Services Group at the Computing Service.
Espen Koht Workshop 24
Espen Koht is the IT Manager for Darwin College.
ICT Support Team (ICTST) Workshop 25
The ICT Support Team (ICTST) was formed in January 2006 with the aim of consolidating desktop and some infrastructure services for the Libraries, UAS and OUCS. Since then we have successfully modernised desktop services and implemented a virtual infrastructure for servers and data storage. ICTST mainly use Altiris tools for standardising and automating desktop management.
Jeremy Worth Introduction
Jeremy Worth has been Chairman of the ICT Forum since 2008, having previously been Secretary to the Forum and Chairman of the IT Support Staff Group since 2004. As Chairman, Jeremy sits on PRAC ICTC (having previously sat on the ITC committee), as well as a number of other management groups. Jeremy has been ICT Manager for the School of Archaeology since 2000 and started working for Archaeology after completing a Masters in Computation at Keble College. Jeremy manages a large mixed Windows, Unix and Mac environment, with most networked services for the School provided by a number of Apple XServes running Mac OS X Server. Jeremy has worked within computing for nearly 20 years and specialises in integrating and managing heterogeneous computer systems and networks.