Profile

I live in Blackheath in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, South East London – in a medium-sized flat which I rent. It’s a nice flat, just about big enough to have friends for dinner, but not quite big enough for anyone else to live in. One of my favourite things is open air cinema and for the last few years my friends and I have screened a film in the gardens of a lovely historic building that’s near me and am keeping my fingers crossed that I might get to do so again this year. My favourite films are Elf and Paddington 2 and I always try and watch The Simpsons at 6pm (and from midday on Sundays). I love film music too and have been to a few film screenings at the Royal Albert Hall where a whole orchestra plays the film’s music along with the film – it’s amazing to watch and to listen to.

Me introducing a screening of The Dish at Charlton House in 2018

Living in Greenwich means I’m very close to the river and during Covid I’ve really missed taking the ferry into central London. It does take longer than all the other ways of getting into London but on a sunny day it’s the best.

One of the ferries I sometimes take from Greenwich into central London.

I love aircraft too and get to see a LOT of them (although not so much at the moment) because I’m on the flight path to Heathrow and sometimes see ones coming in to or leaving City Airport.

I’m a member of the organising team for Dorkbot London, a show and tell event for “people doing strange things with electricity”, which is lots of fun, I love hearing about the creativity that goes into people’s projects. I also look after an email chat list for science communicators around the world called psci-com (p for public, sci for science, com for communication). Some science communicators work as scientists in a lab and also communicate their science, others – like me – work in an office (at home, for the time being) and communicate other people’s science. Psci-com helps people network and hear about jobs and interesting events.

I love going to hear people talking about their work so I go to lots of science talks, and also talks from composers talking about films and TV programmes they’ve written the music for. The next thing I want to learn is shorthand so that I can write down some of the things they say (I know most of the talks are recorded but where’s the fun in that!). I want to learn from my mum’s old Pitman shorthand book from the 1930s!

Also – I’ve just had my first Covid vaccine (Astra Zeneca) so I’m starting to feel a tiny bit more relieved.

The cover of issue 17 of CS4FN magazine on ‘Machines making medicine safer’ which my colleagues and I wrote and edited, you can read a copy here.

I’m the Public Engagement Co-ordinator for the CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun) project and I help get our magazine into schools. This involves a bit of science communication – seeking out stories about computing research to tell to our readers, and writing them and helping edit other people’s stories, and admin (short for administration but hardly anyone ever calls it that). Magazine admin involves finding relevant images to go with our stories, making sure we have enough words in the magazine, getting it designed so it looks good, then printed so that people can actually read it, and posted out to all of our subscribing schools around the UK. My boss at Queen Mary University of London is Prof Paul Curzon and he is a professor of computer science and also a magician. He even uses magic tricks in teaching computing to university students.

I started working for him ELEVEN YEARS AGO!!! … in 2010, when I was working on a project studying ways of making medical devices even safer and easier for doctors and nurses (and patients) to use. Medical devices are(things like blood glucose meters for people with diabetes and hospital machines that pump (gently!) medicine into people who are very ill. The CS4FN magazine is one we wrote about our work on the CHI+MED project (see my Work History in the panel on the right side of this page).

I’m quite lucky in that I generally don’t have too many meetings as most of my work can be done by email. For April 2025 I’m writing a series of blog posts for the CS4FN blog (https://cs4fn.blog) related to April Fools jokes and other playful things that computer scientists have come up with. CS4FN stands for Computer Science For Fun so I am taking my job very literally 🙂 You can see what I’ve been writing here https://cs4fn.blog/quirks-and-oddities/

I’ve also been running an event over the last six Saturdays for about twenty 14 year olds to come to QMUL and find out a bit more about computer science. Each session is run by a different academic or someone from industry and I make sure everything’s set up correctly and that everyone knows where they’re supposed to be.

In a few weeks primary schools around the UK who’ve subscribed to receive copies of our free schools computing puzzles magazines will get them. We’ll be posting those out just after the Easter holidays.

Above: an event with some of our CS4FN magazines and booklets (and classroom activities) on the table. Also some CS4FN-themed bunting in the background.

Above: another event – this one is QMUL’s Festival of Communities – where we have lots of CS4FN magazines on our table and PLENTY of bunting. You can also see my boss Paul sitting inside the tent.

Above: here’s a small child who has coloured in and stuck together a cyborg hat that we made for the Festival of Communities. It links things that human brains can do with some things that robots and computers can do. You can download and print one yourself here https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/brain-hatagon/