Team Members
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Abby Gavin
Research Software Engineer
Abby is a Research Software Engineer who joined the team in 2023. Since graduating with a masters in Maths and Computer Science, she worked at a consulting company providing software expertise to multinational companies. She has skills in C#, Blazor and JavaScript (including React/Redux). After joining the department, she has been working with research groups to move to new tech stacks (Blazor) and improve security features. She has also helped with the Research Applications Group.
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Adina Rahim
Research Software Engineer
Adina is a Research Software Engineer in Research IT. She has experience in Alexa skill development, GUI development, RPA, AI, Deep Learning for Computer Vision, Text Mining, and Recommender Systems. Currently, she is supporting SMEs in Greater Manchester, empowering them to utilize AI for business growth. Additionally, as a Python developer, she actively assists researchers in making ECGs explainable with colour, aiming to aid in the early detection of life-threatening heart conditions.
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Aman Goel
Research Software Engineer
Aman is a Research Software Engineer in Research IT, with a background in computer science and mathematics. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Delhi in 2022 and joined the RSE team in 2023. His time is currently divided between the Mobile Development Service (MDS), training, and community & outreach. Prior to joining Research IT, Aman was a part of the Princeton Research Computing group at the IRIS-HEP Software Institute, where he worked on research software in particle physics.
He is a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow and an Open Life Science project leader. He is passionate about open science and is a certified Carpentries instructor, regularly delivering training workshops. His research interests include software sustainability, community building, physics, and analysis systems.
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Andrew Jerrison
Research Software Engineer
Andrew is a Research Software Engineer and prior to this role had a background in industry working in commercial enterprise software. Since he has been at the University he has worked on software for a large number of projects in many different academic areas. He designs and develops bespoke applications across a range of different technologies and platforms.
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Andrew Rowley
Senior Research Software Engineer
Andrew works as a Senior Research Software Engineer and works both on projects and on project management within the Research Software Engineering team. Since joining the University in 2004 he has worked on several software projects, from video conferencing and recording software, through text mining software and services for the National Centre for Text Mining, and, most recently, the software that executes on the SpiNNaker Neuromorphic Compute platform for the execution of large scale, biologically plausible neural networks as part of the Human Brain Project / EBRAINS, along with services that integrate the platform with other computing systems.
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Anja Le Blanc
Research Software Engineer
Anja is a Research Software Engineer for Research IT. Currently she is leading the Research Applications Group. In her role she is helping researchers to adapt their software to run on larger data efficiently, writing bespoke code in suitable languages, and advising on applications. After finishing her Computer Science studies, she was working on a multitude of interdisciplinary projects. She also has experience in developing and running a national repository service. Programming languages include Java, JavaScript, Python, C.
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Annie Zheng
Research Software Engineer
Annie is a Research Software Engineer in Research IT. She was previously a Year in Industry student on the RSE team in 2022 and has rejoined the RSE team in 2024 after graduating with a degree in Computer Science. She has experience in web and mobile development.
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Anthony Evans
Research Software Engineer
Tony is a Research Software Engineer providing application support to researchers. In his postgraduate studies his research interests included text mining and document clustering. He has also worked in the Library providing IT Support. He has experience with Python, Matlab, R, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL and Omeka. As a member of Software Carpentries he is a helper at Python, Matlab and R workshops run by Research IT and in DigiLab workshops run by the Library.
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Awais Khan
Research Software Engineer
Awais is a Research Software Engineer (RSE) and works on the Applications Support team and the Mobile Development Service (MDS) in Research IT. He is a Computer Science graduate and has experience working with web technologies including: JavaScript, React, GraphQL, Elixir and Phoenix as well as software testing frameworks. MDS uses the .NET MAUI (.NET 6) and Xamarin Forms frameworks to develop cross platform mobile apps both for Android and iOS.
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Benito Matischen
Research Software Engineer
Benito is a Research Software Engineer who joined Research IT in 2024. They’ve worked on projects involving web technologies including Python, Django and Wagtail, and using techniques like prompt engineering to utilise Large Language Models with the Turing Innovation Catalyst and various faculties. They’re a keen learner of new technical skills and research areas.
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Carri King
Research Software Engineer
Carri is a Research Software Engineer who recently joined from industry. They previously worked as a Lead Developer, Product Owner and Software Architect focussing on high-performance, distributed industrial visualisation and simulation, particularly XR and the management of massive datasets. They are particularly skilled in C++ and widely experienced with many technologies including CUDA, OpenGL, Python, Kubernetes and cloud platforms. Carri has a breadth of skills in software engineering management, product management, and agile methodologies. Their passion is developing useful and innovative software which delights and empowers users.
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Chris Fullerton
Head of Research Software Engineering
Chris is Deputy Head of Research Software Engineering and chairs the Department’s Operational Excellence group, which brings together initiatives focused on transformation and service improvement. Chris leads the Department’s involvement in the AI Pathfinder programme, delivering proof-of-concept AI tools for staff across the University.
With a background in interdisciplinary research, Chris holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics and spent a decade as a postdoctoral researcher in Theoretical and Computational Physics and Respiratory Physiology at universities in the UK and France. Since joining the RSE Department in 2022, Chris has worked as both a developer and manager on several large-scale applied AI programmes.
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Chandima Samarakoon
Research Software Engineer
Chandima is a Research Software Engineer with a Master's degree in Computer Science and a background in software development and natural language processing (NLP). She has experience working in various technical roles, including as a Full stack Software Engineer and a Frontend developer. Her expertise spans a wide range of technologies including Java, Python, JavaScript, React, Node.js, and MongoDB. Additionally, she has advanced skills in NLP and large language models (LLMs). Chandima has contributed to significant projects such as optimizing machine learning pipelines, enhancing financial market software, and conducting research on the natural language processing domain.
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David Wood
Research Software Engineer (intern)
David is currently an undergraduate student at the University of Manchester studying Computer Science (graduating in 2027), undergoing a year in industry placement as a Research Software Engineer. He has experience in a wide variety of programming languages, such as Python, Java (including frameworks such as Spring), C/C++, Go, Rust. He has worked with the Digital Cancer Research Team (DCR) at the Christie Hospital to develop full-stack web applications (Protocol Deviation Monitoring Tool) using Angular/Spring Boot and has a particular interest in user interface design. Enjoys contributing to open-source software and has an interest in learning new technologies and programming languages.
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Donal Fellows
Research Software Engineer
Donal is a research software engineer at the University of Manchester. Since 2002 he has worked supporting data-intensive research across many fields of science and humanities (from weather forecasting to solar wind physics, and from business resource planning to digital library curation), is experienced with the complexities at the intersection of research data and its metadata and has experience adapting workflow solutions and cloud research.
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Fransisco Herrerias Azcue
Research Software Engineer
Francisco is a Research Software Engineer with a background in statistical physics. He completed his PhD in 2019, studying motion and heterogeneity in models of population dynamics. He then worked as a Lecturer at ITESM (Mexico) for 3 years before joining the RSE team. His experience is primarily programming with Python, MATLAB, and C++, as well as data analysis and presentation using, for example, R, Minitab, gnuplot, geogebra or LaTeX. He is really keen on containerizing software (Docker) and automating tasks (GitHub Actions, Ansible, MQTT), and has also worked with HPC facilities and web interface development (Flask, Rails, Shiny).
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Gerard Capes
Research Software Engineer
Gerard is a Research Software Engineer, with a background in Physics and Atmospheric Science, working with observational data from field experiments, and modelling laboratory chamber experiments. He is an experienced Software Carpentry instructor who enjoys teaching good software development practices to researchers and is always keen to improve his own technical skills. He has recently worked on projects which have involved speeding up code using parallelisation techniques, supporting SMEs to utilize AI (machine learning) as part of their business, automating the marking of student coursework, and developing analysis code for materials science lab data.
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Hamzah Abbasi
Research Software Engineer
Hamzah joined the team as a Research Software Engineer in 2025, after completing a Computer Science degree at the University of Manchester. He previously completed a Chemical Engineering degree from the University of Sheffield. He also undertook a 12-month placement with RSE team, where he worked with the Digital Cancer Research team to develop a clinical trial data platform to monitor protocol deviations, gaining experience in full-stack development, data engineering, and AI integration. His work focuses on designing scalable, transparent systems and applying modern AI techniques to research challenges.
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Hugo Chu
Research Software Engineer
Hugo is a developer who joined Research IT team as a Research Software Engineer in 2023, with a background in commercial web development. Prior to joining the team, he worked primarily as a backend developer, building web applications using technologies such as Java, Spring Boot, and SQL. While his main focus is backend development, he also has an interest in full-stack development. In addition, Peter has an interest in using Python for software development and has experience using Docker for application containerization. He is also interested in machine learning and large language model (LLM) technologies.
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James Sinnott
Research Software Engineer
James is a Research Software Engineer with over 15 year's experience as a software developer in both industry and academia. He specialises in developing web applications and has a particular interest in usability and good user interface design.
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Jia Wu
Research Software Engineer
Jia joined Research IT in 2023 as a Research Software Engineer. She has completed a PhD in Machine Learning, AI. After that, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher where she delivered machine learning software in various research domains, such as credit scoring, energy optimization and crime profiles. Jia also has many years of experience in developing and productionising machine learning products in industry. Her main programming language is Python.
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Jonny Taylor
Research Software Engineer
Jonny is a Research Software Engineer, having joined the team in 2023. He gained a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences in 2013 from the University of Manchester and subsequently worked as a researcher in various areas of atmospheric science. He is currently supporting the development of various AI projects including bespoke deep learning models in pytorch and the deployment of GenAI/LLMs, including working with external companies as part of Manchester Turing Innovation Hub. He mostly works in Python but has extensive experience in Igor Pro. In his spare time, he also likes to play with Arduinos.
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Joshua Woodcock
Research Software Engineer
Josh is a Research Software Engineer. A graduate from our university, they worked in our Web Applications Development Service (WADS) - creating websites for researchers using Django and Wagtail. They have also developed for VR and mobile, and within data science using Python, R and Typescript. Josh is particularly interested in using new technologies to further research and sharing knowledge on how best to use them.
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Lasse Schmieding
Research Software Engineer
Lasse is a Research Software Engineer, joining the team in September 2024. Previously he completed a PhD in Mathematics at the University of York, specializing in Quantum Field Theory in Curved Spacetimes. He has worked on projects with the Web Applications Development Service, developing rich web applications for research. Prior to becoming an RSE, he has commercial experience developing data-driven web applications for retailers.
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Louise Lever
Research Software Engineer
Louise is a Research Software Engineer, specialising in web development and data visualization and is the team lead for the Web Application Development Service (WADS). She has collaborated on many projects ranging from local academic support through to international commercial product delivery. Louise provides technical consultancy to the researcher community and has a life-long passion for the application of web delivery, computer graphics and visualization to research challenges.
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Martin Herrerias Azcue
Research Software Engineer
Martin joined IT services as Research Software Engineer in 2023. He has a background in mechanical and electrical engineering, electronics, renewable energy, system modelling and data analysis. His latest projects as an RSE have been focused on workflow automation using python, MATLAB, and more recently CWL and Galaxy. He also regularly works with R-Shiny Apps, maintains our pilot Shiny server, enjoys teaching R and general good software practice, and coordinates the R User Group in CaDiR.
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Mike Jones
Research Software Engineer
Mike is a Research Software Engineer often found at the intersection of IT infrastructure and scientific computing. Originally trained as a technological and experimental particle physicist, his PhD focused on grid computing and distributed filesystems. Since starting at Manchester Computing in 2001, he has supported national scientific services and contributed to major European e-Science and standards initiatives. He later joined Mimas, helping migrate its services to the cloud ahead of a transition into Jisc, where he eventually became Head of IT Infrastructure. After retiring on health grounds in 2018, Mike returned part-time to university life, happily tinkering with computers again.
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Phil Bradbury
Senior Research Software Engineer
Phil is a Senior Research Software Engineer in Research IT and the lead for the Mobile Development Service (MDS). He designs and builds secure, scalable web applications; and mobile solutions that can integrate with them; to support research teams with their data collection, visualisation, and analysis requirements. His primary areas of focus are providing architectural advice for solutions, code review for peers and more junior developers, and bespoke application development with technical support/guidance for research teams.
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Scott Archer-Nicholls
Senior Research Software Engineer
Scott is a Senior Research Software Engineer. He has a background in Physics and environmental Sciences and expertise in Python, Fortran, high-performance computing, and data analysis and visualisation. He gained his PhD in Atmospheric Science from the University of Manchester in 2014 and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science in Boulder, Colorado; and the University of Cambridge. He joined Manchester RSE team in July 2022 and has been working as a Senior Research Software Engineer since April 2024.
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Theresa Teng
Research Software Engineer
Theresa is a Research Software Engineer. She has many years of experience, working on the design and development of bespoke applications for a wide range of research projects in Humanities and Medicine areas. She specialises in web applications and databases in a number of technologies and platforms.
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Toni Price
Research Software Engineer
Toni joined the team as a Research Software Engineer in 2024, bringing a background in Statistics and over 15 years of industry-based software engineering experience (primarily C++ and Java within Treasury Management, Pharmaceuticals, and the Internet sector). After exploring web and Python development, she completed a PhD in the Centre for Multilevel Modelling at the University of Bristol, focused on improving computational speed for simulation-based multilevel sample size determination. During this time, Toni developed a strong enthusiasm for R which continues to grow.