Profile

I grew up on a dairy farm in the middle of Devon, went to the local state primary school and on to the secondary school in our nearby town. I had a keen interest/ability in Maths and Sciences from a young age but my particular interest has always been in computers which I have pursued as a career.

I have two children (aged 7 and 11) so am familiar with children of primary school age. They spend a lot of their time watching or playing Minecraft whilst I tried to play a little. I tell my younger son that I am a doctor and right now he aspires to work at the Quadram Institute when he is older but I suspect he may not have the patience/desire to sit at a computer for much of the day since he prefers to be outdoors feeding his chickens.

Despite being a technology college, there were very limited options to study computing at my comprehensive school so much of my early experience in computer coding was undertaken on my home PC. After compulsory education, I stay at the sixth form and focused on Maths and Science A levels whilst I also spent a year studying computing.

I moved to Norwich to pursue a degree in computing and remained in the city ever since. I have lived in the city for half of my life and spent much of that time on the research park at the University of East Anglian and in more recent times at the Quadram Institute.

The Quadram Institute was previously known as the Insitute of Food Research and most/all researchers were from a biology background. I’m part of a new generation of researchers whom have significant computing expertise and I use this to analyse biological data.