Andrew Sansum has been at the Rutherford Appleton Lab since 1986, initially working as a physicist and then moving in 1990 to what was then the Central Computing Department. He has worked in a number of roles over the years, including building the OPAL detector for the Large Electron-Positron, work he describes as “awesome!" and which saw him spending six months each year at CERN during the build.
His role today is just as challenging, although in a different way as he is currently Head of SCD's Systems Division and Technical Director of the IRIS collaboration, a £16M project which entails developing and integrating a national eInfrastructure for STFC.
The best part of his current role? “Supporting and developing staff, watching them develop new skills and gain confidence and independence. It's a fantastic feeling when I see that they are already several steps ahead of me in their analysis of a problem, with their own ideas and plans and I'm left with no more to contribute."
