The Team

Robert Haines

Research Lifecycle Programme Director

Robert is the Head of Research IT and an Honorary Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science. He is one of the originators of the term ‘Research Software Engineer’, has served for six years as an elected representative of the UK RSE Association, chaired the first conference of Research Software Engineers in 2016, and is a founding trustee of the Society of Research Software Engineering.

Robert has worked in a wide range of domains for research projects of various types and sizes from small proof-of-concept investigations up to long-term multi-partner UKRI, EU and US NSF projects. He has collaborated with diverse organisations such as utility companies, national laboratories, start-ups and public bodies, as well as other universities. He also contributes to a number of open-source software communities. His favourite programming language is Ruby.

Robert’s research interests include software engineering, software sustainability, software use in open and reproducible research, software citation and credit, and career paths for software engineers and data scientists. He teaches on two course units in the Department of Computer Science: ‘Software Engineering’ for second year undergraduate students and ‘Agile and Test-Driven Development’ in the taught postgraduate programme.

Email: Robert.Haines@manchester.ac.uk  

 

Dr Kamie Kitmitto

Programme Manager

Kamie is a geospatial expert interested in the creation, value addition and management of data big and small.

After finishing his PhD in Geomatics Engineering at UCL and a stint in industry, he moved to Manchester in 1991 to provide consultancy and training to the academic community on the use of geospatial technologies.

Kamie is interested in the creation and utilisation of Spatial Data Infrastructure and their part in supporting, research, visualisation and analysis.

Email: Kamie.Kitmitto@manchester.ac.uk 

 

The RLP Project Team

Anthony Allen Business Change Manager

Anthony leads RLP’s change management team and is lead on:

• Facilitate research networking and collaboration
• Research Experience (From August 2024)

Bryan Archer Project Manager

• Enhancing support for research: end-to-end processes
• Professional Services for research
• Digital Collections
• Improve access, export and preservation of data

Bill Ayres Strategic Lead – Research Data Management

• Improve access, export and preservation of data
• Open, Responsible & Reproducible (From August 2024)

As Strategic Lead for RDM Bill is responsible for the University’s strategic direction and service offerings that facilitate best practice in research data management (RDM) for our research community. He has worked in HE for nearly 20 years in a variety of roles including service delivery management for IT infrastructure (desktop, compute, storage and networking) at faculty level, before focusing on RDM from 2016. He leads the Library’s RDM Team whose services include training, advocacy, and advice, alongside platforms to facilitate effective data management planning and research data publishing. Bill is passionate about open research and the benefits this brings for society. As part of the RLP Programme Team he leads RLP1 Project U (Improve management, sharing, publishing and preservation of research data (U) and is PS lead for RLP2’s Open, Responsible & Reproducible Research theme.

Callam Barnes Project Manager

Most recently working a project manager in a digital agency, managing the development of bespoke software and websites, Callam has successfully managed projects in private and 3^rd sector organisations.

Callam enjoys improving people, processes and communication.

Dr James Bird Technical Specialist

James is a Technical Specialist within the Research Lifecycle Programme (RLP), designated with the task of sourcing both Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) and Lab Information Management Systems (LIMS) solutions that fit the needs of researchers across the breadth of the University.

Having completed his first submission of his PhD thesis in January 2024, for an award from the Department of Materials Science at the University, he has recent, first-hand experience of the systems currently in use. Throughout his doctoral studies, James took a keen interest in all aspects of Research Data Management (RDM). With the help of Research IT, he was able to implement an open research workflow supported with an ELN within his field of nanomaterials research. Outside of UoM, James has been a teaching assistant, a gardener, a nanomaterials research scientist (in industry), a chemist and more!

ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5299-8816

Email: james.bird@manchester.ac.uk

Malcolm Brown (Project Manager)

• Research support interface, reporting and communications 
• Implement a costings approach and tool to model grants
• Pure Awards Management

Rohan Denton Business Change Officer

Rohan joined the Research Lifecycle Programme in January 2024 as a Business Change Officer and supports Change Managers across number of projects within the RLP.

Prior to joining the programme, he spent 18 months in the Universities Strategic Change Office (SCO). In his time in the SCO, Rohan worked as a Business Change Coordinator on the External Calling (Teams Voice) Project.

Before working for the University, Rohan spent 4 years studying at Manchester, completing both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the School of Social Science.

Emily Dewhurst Business Change Officer

Emily is a Business Change Officer working on the Research Lifecycle Programme. Joining the University in 2018, Emily has worked within the Humanities Research Support team and as part of the team responsible for managing the roll out of Academic access to the project costing tool, BlackDackel. Prior to joining the University, Emily worked within Research Support at the London School of Economics.

She is currently working on Project A – Award Mobilisation.

Alex Doak

Godspower Ekadi Functional Analyst

Godspower is a Functional Analyst on the Research Lifecycle Programme (RLP) working majorly on the Research Risk Profiler tool which is built in Qualtrics. His background is in Software Development. He joined the university in 2022 as a Software Engineer on the Digital Health Software Team in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health before moving to RLP in 2023.

Prior to joining the University, Godspower has taken on Software Engineer and Web Project Manager Roles within Industry. He holds an MSc. in Mobile Computing and Communications Networks from the University of Leeds and a BSc in Computer Science from Covenant University, Nigeria.

Tony Fargher

Emma Finch Programme Manager, N8 CIR

Emma is the Programme Manager for the N8 Centre for Computationally Intensive Research. This programme brings together researchers from across the N8 universities (Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York) for both training in numerical techniques and to help create cross-faculty and cross-institutional collaborations.

She joined the university in 1999 as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Currently 50% of her time is spent working on the RLP for the N8 CIR and 50% is a hybrid role within DEES as a digital systems architect and researcher. She is a geophysicist, and her research focuses on the development and application of novel numerical techniques to better understand tectonics, sedimentation and basin evolution in the Earth Sciences.

Bharti Gupta Business Change Manager

Bharti is a Business Change Manager and Project Manager for the Research Lifecycle Programme with a Post-Graduate degree in Computer Sciences, whose first stint at the University of Manchester was in 2008 as a software engineer at Mimas which was a nationally designated academic data centre based at the Faculty of Humanities and provided strong technical expertise on EuroPMC (Life Sciences) and Landmap (Geospatial) services. 

Post that she joined the private sector and worked up her career as IT project manager and later business transformation manager across various industries such as Banking, Asset Management, Telecom and Oil & Gas. She has vast experience in helping global businesses design and implement FinTech-led Strategies and deliver Transformational Change to improve revenue, streamline operations, and reduce risk through strong governance.  

She has proven skills in engaging with global delivery partners, heading end-to-end programme/project activities through robust communication model and setup project and change management best practices by applying globally accepted IT and business management principles and standards.

Niki Harratt Communications and Engagement Officer

Nik joined the University of Manchester in 2019 after spending almost 20 years working in the museum and galleries sector. Here he worked as a social media manager, as well as leading a cutting-edge creative technology department specialising in high-end photography, 3D scanning and printing and augmented reality.

His first role at the University was with N8 CIR before joining the Research Lifecycle Programme in 2022. As a communications and engagement officer he helps ensure that the work of the various projects is clearly shared and communicated to researchers and colleagues across the University. 

Dr Simon Hood Project Manager

• Incrementally build compute capacity and improve access to compute resources
• High Performance Compute investments
• Streamline procurement of cloud solutions

Daniel Hudson Business Change Officer

Dan is a Business Change Officer supporting the Research Lifecycle Programme. After completing an MSc Management degree at the University of Sheffield, he began working within the Business Change Practice of a Sheffield based IT consulting firm, supporting clients across the Private and Public Sectors with the delivery of a range of major change initiatives.

He joined the University of Manchester in May 2023, and now supports Change Managers across a number of projects within RLP, including Project E (Networking and Collaboration), Establishing a Secure Research Environment, and the Academic Timesheets Project. 

Caroline Martin Project Manager

Caroline is a Project Manager for the Research Lifecycle Programme. She started working for the University as a Faculty of Life Sciences, IT Officer in 2008. Since then she has also worked as Digital Preservation Coordinator in the Library, Escalation Lead in the IT Support Centre, in the ITS PMO and in the ITS Service Transition team.

Matthew McGill Project Coordinator

Matt is a Project Coordinator on the Research Lifecycle Programme. He joined the programme in 2023 and previously worked in the games industry as a Game Designer, Narrative Designer and Producer. Matt is currently working with both the RLP and the B.15 Modelmaking Workshop on various projects.

Dr Gail Millin-Chalabi Project Manager

Gail is the Project Manager for the Research Lifecycle Programme leading on the Research Risk Profiler and the Pure Migration to Elsevier AWS Cloud. She is Co-I Researcher in the Geography department on the NERC funded Towards a UK Fire Danger Rating System covering Earth Observation techniques to map UK fuels, wildfire threat analysis and assessment of national fire statistics.

Gail has 20 years of experience using geospatial technologies beginning her career as a GIS Scientist at the USGS Earthquake Hazards Team, California. She worked for the Landmap Service at Mimas delivering TB’s of geospatial data nationally for HE and FE institutions using the Enterprise ERDAS APOLLO system.

In 2009 Gail began a PhD P/T on the Characterisation of Burn Scars using Multitemporal and Multisensor Synthetic Aperture Radar in the Peak District National Park. During this time, she also worked as a Geospatial Development Officer, e-Learning Technologist and a Lecturer in Remote Sensing. In 2016 she was the GIS and Remote Sensing Technical Specialist for SEED and led the development of the cloud-based Esri ArcGIS Online Spatial Data Infrastructure to support university wide teaching and research. Alongside this, she won the Copernicus Masters Sustainable Living Challenge Award for her start-up company EnviroSAR Ltd where she managed and delivered geospatial wildfire projects for government and private sector organisations.

Link to Research Explorer profile: https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/gail.millin-chalabi

Vicky Short Change Communications Officer

Vicky’s background is in IT, communications, capability and change in large, complex organisations including Lloyds Banking Group (for 20 something years!), then short term assignments at Associated British Foods and the University of Leeds.

She began her IT Service Desk career at ICI and Unipart many moons ago!

Traceyanne Sinclair (Business Change Manager)

• Professional services for research
• Implement a costings approach and tool to model grants
• Facilitate research networking and collaboration

 

Kalu Uka Business Change Officer

Kalu is a Business Change Officer working on the Research Lifecycle Programme. His background is in Event and Project Management having joined the University of Manchester in 2018. During his time within The University of Manchester, Kalu has worked within the Estates & Facilities team and in the Faculty of Science & Engineering as part of team responsible for managing the move of staff, students, and equipment from North Campus to Engineering Building A&B.

Prior to the joining the University, Kalu worked on several events and projects for New Balance Athletic Shoes and Manchester City Council.

Jacqueline Watson Programme Coordinator

Jacqueline joined the University in 2024 as a Project Coordinator for the programme. She came from the teaching profession, leaving as Head of Chemistry, having taught Science in a secondary school since 2007. Prior to this Jacqueline had worked in the food industry in Regulatory Affairs. 

 

The RLP Interns

Kate Harrison

Estefania Sanguineti RLP Intern

Estefania is a Research Lifecycle Programme Intern with an bachelor’s degree in English Literature with Creative Writing. She works in managing data for CRMs and the implementation of the VIDATUM Timesheet System for research projects across university faculties.

She is currently working on in the Establishing a Secure Environment project supporting engagement workshops and coordinating events.

Roopali Sharma