News & Events
Welcome to the HPC Wales management team
David Craddock
CEO HPC Wales
Prior to his appointment as the Chief Executive Officer of HPC Wales, David was Director of Enterprise and Collaborative Projects at Aberystwyth University, responsible for leading a team of over thirty and developing the enterprise strategy for the University. His role included the management of business development, technology transfer, contracts and research and European funding services. Working with the senior management team, David also led a number of change management programmes including business planning for the Aberystwyth / Bangor Partnership, and the merger of the BBSRC research funded institute IGER into the University.
A BA (Hons) graduate from Middlesex University, David previously worked for two Unilever companies over a 23 year period, mainly in international marketing, product development and business development roles in the detergent and speciality chemicals markets. In addition, he has been Director of two SMEs in the technical textile and electrical engineering markets.
David played a lead role in the original team that developed the vision and business plan for HPC Wales and secured the £40m funding.
Professor Martyn Guest
Technical Director
Professor Martyn Guest is Technical Director of HPC Wales and has been Director of Advanced Research Computing (ARCCA) at Cardiff University since 2007. Over the past thirty years, he has led a variety of high performance and distributed computing initiatives, from his role as coordinator of SERC’s Distributed Computing Initiative in the late 1980s, to Leader of the Terascale Applications Team within the UK’s National HPCx Facility from 2002. He spent three years as Senior Chief Scientist and Technical Group Leader of the High Performance Computational Chemistry Group at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Washington, USA), before returning to the UK in 1995 as Associate Director of the Computational Science and Engineering Department (CSED) at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory. There he was responsible for all activities in computational chemistry and high performance and distributed computing.
Martyn is a founder member of EPSRC’s Technology Watch Panel (TWP), a member of the corresponding Applications Panel (AP), and has provided advice to a wide variety of agencies and organisations in both the UK (Research Councils, AWE, GCHQ) and abroad – NSF and DOE (USA), NSERC (Canada), CHPC (South Africa), ICHEC (Ireland). His research interests cover a variety of topics in the development and application of computational chemistry methods on high performance computers. He is lead author of the GAMESS-UK electronic structure program, and has written or contributed to more than 240 articles.
David Elcock
Finance Director
David joined HPC Wales as Finance Director and Company Secretary in March 2011. A qualified accountant, David previously worked in Local Government before joining a nationally recognised Consultancy firm as Director of Operations. David’s skills centre on finance and operations within both the public and private sectors. He has extensive knowledge of the governance and control requirements of the public sector, complemented by his private sector business acumen and consulting experience. He is responsible for all of the strategic financial/resource aspects of HPC Wales and plays a key role in terms of monitoring performance and reporting to the Board.
Joanne Preece
Programme Delivery Director
During a 25 year career in the IT and telecoms industry, Jo Preece has worked with the public and voluntary sectors, including Local Government, NHS, Police and not-for-profit organisations, in technical delivery, business development and consultancy roles. Jo has held senior positions with several blue chip IT service providers and has extensive experience of large-scale, complex programmes delivered through collaborative ventures.
She has developed specific expertise in business transformation, encompassing lean BPR and systems thinking, business process outsourcing consultancy and solution development, benefits management and business case development. Jo is a firm believer that, although IT is a key enabler of transformation, people are critical to successful change, and she is a keen advocate of change management tools and techniques and the use of behavioural and cultural approaches, which she has applied throughout her career.
Dr Christine Kitchen
Technical Manager
Dr Christine Kitchen is currently providing Programme Coordination for HPC Wales. She first became involved in HPC Wales at the early planning stages through her role as Manager of Advanced Research Computing (ARCCA) at Cardiff University, which she has held since September 2007.
Christine obtained her BSc in Chemistry in 1996, and her PhD in Theoretical Chemistry in 2001, both from Sheffield University. Following her doctorate, she spent a further three years in the Molecular Modelling and Drug Design group at AstraZeneca, Cheshire, where she undertook research on a grid-based Poisson-Boltzmann model to predict the electrostatic properties of molecules, and acted as the system administrator responsible for a variety of SGI systems and a Linux Cluster.
In January 2004, Christine joined the Distributed Computing (DisCo) group, part of the Computational Science and Engineering Department at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory, where she led the Commercial Outreach and Training activity and undertook a number of roles, from system administrator through to providing technical expertise to collaborative university and industry sites with mid-range cluster computing.
Georgina Thomson
Marketing and Communications Manager
Georgina joined HPC Wales in September 2011 as Marketing and Communications Manager. She has a wealth of experience across both private and public sectors, with expertise spanning strategic communications management, marketing, PR, social media, event management and web design.
After graduating in 2001, Georgina went on to do a Masters in Language and Communication Research at Cardiff University, before joining financial services provider the Corporate Planning Group as Marketing Manager.
Prior to joining HPC Wales, Georgina managed the communications, marketing and public relations for Cardiff Law School and the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University. She successfully launched her own communications consultancy alongside her full time roles, through which she has worked with a number of SMEs and public sector organisations across Wales.
Dr Gareth Davies
EU Project Advisor
Dr Gareth Davies has been a project Advisor to HPC Wales from the original bid development, and has worked as a Project Manager at the University of Wales since 2009. He graduated with a Masters in Engineering from Swansea University, after obtaining his Maîtrise in Innovation from the University of Angers in France. Upon returning to Swansea as a research assistant, Gareth obtained his doctorate, researching impact models for economic development in South West Wales.
During 2003/4 he was seconded to support the Welsh Assembly Government’s Knowledge Economy Nexus review of academic-industrial links, and has since worked on projects around the world to develop science park and technology transfer models. Prior to joining the University of Wales, Gareth also worked as Project Manager at Swansea University for the Institute of Life Science 2 ERDF-supported initiative. He has also worked on a broad range of industry and government funded technology-focused projects for partners ranging from micro-businesses through to major multinationals.
