Research IT

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Research Platforms

  • Abhijit Ghosh

    Systems Administrator

    Abhijit Ghosh works as Senior Platforms Research Engineer (HPC) and has a strong foundation in HPC system administration, application and user support and network administration. Abhijit has been managing and maintaining HPC clusters and IT infrastructure for 11 years before joining the Research IT team of the University as Infrastructure Analyst. He has extensive experience of managing email server, web server, DNS server, VPN, local area and wide area network, including configuration and maintenance of switches, routers and firewalls. Abhijit primarily looks after administration of Linux HPC clusters and provides application and user support.

  • Andrew Gilchrist

    Systems Administrator

    Andrew is a Systems Administrator working as a member of the Research Platforms team. He has been administering the REDCap ( Research Electronic Data Capture ) service for the last 10 years, as well as supporting academics with the provision and configuration of Virtual Machines for research.

  • Brian Blower

    Systems Administrator

    Brian joined the University in 2005, providing Linux IT support for the Imaging Science Group within the faculty of Biology, Medicine, and Health. He is currently working as a Systems Administrator for the Research team. He has previously implemented a range of projects including large capacity work-group storage systems, enterprise backup solutions, both Windows and Linux HPC clusters and has been responsible for supporting multiple server rooms. Brian’s last assignment saw him implement and develop the Trustworthy Research Environment, co-ordinating building work with the installation of the necessary utilities and environment to deploy an OpenStack cluster for secure data research.

  • Chris Grave

    Systems Administrator

    Chris joined Research IT in 2017 as a Systems Administrator specialising in Linux and High‑Performance Computing (HPC). He has worked closely with research groups across the University, developing tailored technical solutions and gaining a strong understanding of diverse computational needs. His work now centres on supporting the University’s HPC facilities, ensuring the platforms run efficiently and enabling researchers to tackle large‑scale, data‑intensive challenges across a wide range of disciplines.

  • Connor Main

    Systems Administrator

    Connor is a Systems Administrator who joined Research IT in 2023, after several years working for commercial hosting provider and development agency. He utilises his background in cloud computing in the commercial space to support AWS architecture for University projects.

  • David Horrocks

    Infrastructure Analyst

    David joined the university in 2001 as a Lab and IT technician and worked his way through the IT ranks and across much of the campus, performing a wide range of IT setup and support roles that evolved over time culminating in deskside support. After spending a long time on north campus, lockdown, and all that entailed, resulted in a move southward. Despite the sunnier climes and architecture of the main campus, David chose to look for greater challenges and joined the Edge Compute and Satellite Storage arm of the Research IT team in 2022.

  • Dave Love

    Research Infrastructure Engineer

    Dave has wide experience from a long career doing and supporting research computing, initially as an experimental nuclear physicist. He had previous assorted hardware/software research support roles at Liverpool, Daresbury Laboratory, and Manchester, and has maintained several significant free and semi-free software projects. Despite explicitly doing research software engineering before anyone he knows, Dave is now in the Platforms group. He has particular interests in HPC/HTC (and other) system management, portable performance engineering, and security.

  • Felix Edelsten

    DevOPS Engineer

    Felix is a graduate of the University’s Chemistry department, following which he began his career within the IT department working in both Field Support and Service Desk roles. He then went on to pursue cloud and DevOps roles, eventually leading the SRE team for a successful Manchester based cloud consultancy. In 2023 he returned to the University and now applies his experience to help researchers get the most out of the cloud.

  • George Leaver

    Senior Systems Administrator

    George joined the University in 1997, working in computer graphics, scientific visualization, and high-performance computing. Currently, as a member of the Research Platforms team, George looks after the University's computationally intensive research systems, in particular the Linux HPC clusters and GPU systems available to research groups from all faculties. This covers system administration, application support, software development, and end-user training in the use of the University's computational systems.

  • Goar Sanchez Sanz

    Edge Compute and Satellite Storage Lead

    Goar is the Edge Compute and Satellite Storage Lead within Research IT. He got a PhD in Computational and Theoretical chemistry by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and after several postdoctoral positions he moved into the HPC world in 2016 as the National Service Manager at the Irish Centre For High-End Computing. In 2023 he joined the Research IT where he led the Research Storage Team and Edge Compute and Satellite Storage services. Since 2026 he is just focused on the Edge compute team.

  • Huma Daud

    Infrastructure Analyst

    Huma joined the University in 2003 and was at the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health (NCISH) for 19 years before joining Research IT in 2022. At NCISH, she was responsible for developing, implementing, and supporting NCISH’s database as well as supporting the network on which the database was hosted. Huma also worked closely with the NCISH Information Governance Lead on developing their security policies.

  • John Tollitt

    Infrastructure Analyst

    John joined the University in 2024 and is an Infrastructure Analyst in Research IT. He has worked in various technology roles for over 20 years, mostly in the private sector. He started in service desk and pursued infrastructure and project roles. He has experience supporting VM platforms, Storage, Azure cloud, networking and security as well as Microsoft server and edge systems. John is currently responsible for providing Windows support to various projects and managing and maintaining edge storage, including GPFS instances across the University.

  • Martin Wolstencroft

    Senior Research Platforms Engineer (HPC)

    Martin is a Senior Research Platforms Engineer (HPC) with a focus on GPU compute within the Computational Shared Facility. Joining Manchester in July 2025, he has a PhD in Computational Geodynamics from Cardiff University (2009) and his career path to date includes university research, scientific software testing in industry, and university research IT. The constant on his professional journey has been the application of HPC and data to the development of human knowledge.

  • Mike Laverick

    Research Platforms Engineer

    Mike joined the University in 2025 and is a Research Platforms Engineer in Research IT. Mike was formerly a Research Software Engineer at the University of Auckland for 5 years where he supported VM and RDS services, delivered Carpentries workshops, providing data workflow consultancies, and supporting a range of research projects with bespoke workflow needs. With a background in atomic astrophysics and a knack for Python, Mike has jumped across to the Platforms space and will be focussing on supporting the universities HTC platform, the HTCondor pool.

  • Penny Richardson

    Service and Team Lead

    Pen joined the University in October 2001 as a helpdesk analyst for local and national HPC services. She is currently a Service and Team Lead, within the Research Team, for compute platforms, which includes the Computational Shared Facility (CSF), and associated systems such as interactive facilities, research virtual desktops/gateways, and Research Data Storage (RDS).

  • Peter Crowther

    Infrastructure Analyst

    Peter joined Research IT as a Research Software Engineer and worked on a wide variety of projects including writing systems for automating student coursework assessment in Computer Science, helping researchers develop analysis code and data management processes in the Department of Materials, a COVID-19 modelling project and working with the WADS team to develop websites. After 3 years as an RSE, Peter moved to the Platforms team and now works on designing and maintaining secure infrastructure for research data storage, both locally and in the cloud.

  • Richard Hoskins

    Infrastructure Analyst

    Richard is an Analyst with a background in databases, development and systems administration. He joined the University in 2001, working initially as an Analyst/Programmer and subsequently as a Database Administrator overseeing the key Business Systems. He studied Mathematics at The (Victoria) University of Manchester and holds a PhD from UMIST.

  • Rogers Tuyisenge

    Systems Administrator

    After completing an MSc computing degree at the University of Liverpool in 2007, he began working with the Carphone Warehouse supporting in-store IT systems like EPOS Printers and among others for over 3 years. Rogers then joined the University of Manchester in 2011 working on both the shared service desk and desk side support mainly in FSE in various roles as well as supporting Start of year IT activities & weekly VIP support. Seeking a new challenge, he joined Research IT in 2022 as part of the Edge computing and satellite storage services as a Systems Administrator.

  • Rowan Wilson

    Research Platforms Engineer

    Rowan joined the University in 2025 and works as a Research Platforms Engineer in Research IT. Before this, he worked in industry as a Linux and DevOps engineer, focusing on system administration, automation, and cloud infrastructure.

  • Simon Hood

    Head of Research Platforms

    Simon is the Head of Research Platforms within Research IT. With a PhD in Mathematics from The University of Exeter, he has also worked at The University of Liverpool as a postdoc in Earth Sciences and as a lecturer in the Mathematics Department. Simon leads the team which develops and supports both on-site computational and storage research platforms and AWS/Azure-based cloud services. These include HPC (the CSF), HTC (the Condor Pool), resilient and high performance storage, the Research VM Service, the Highly Restricted Data Service (including the DSH and REDCap) and our new Edge Compute Service.

  • Simon Williams

    Systems Administrator

    Simon joined the University in 1987 as a Papermaker in Paper Science, working on the pilot plant. He later transitioned into IT within the Department, eventually moving into Deskside Support for FSE and then IT Services. He led the IT decant from North Campus to the Nancy Rothwell Building and coordinated IT support for the Civil Engineering course delivered yearly at Patterdale Hall. Seeking new challenges, he joined the EDGE Compute and Satellite Storage Team in Research IT in October 2025.