CISG-PCMG20

John Hemingway was appointed as CIO of Durham University in 2019. At Durham, John has dual responsibility for strategic direction and oversight of digital services, alongside directing the core information services provider and co-ordinating other providers (e.g. Durham has an advanced Computing Group, which manage high performance computing)

Melissa Hankinson leads the University of Canberra’s Quality and Service Improvement unit, committed to embedding a culture of continuous improvement through training and communities of practice, while also leading transformational improvement projects. She is Deputy Chair of the Asia-Pacific chapter of the Lean in Higher Education Network, and elected professional staff representative on the University of Canberra Council.

As vice president of digital transformation, Richard Forrest leads the strategy and management of Ellucian’s digital transformation organization and he is responsible for planning, readiness and delivery of Ellucian’s thought leadership, enterprise architecture and services engineering practices. Previously, Richard held leadership roles in product management, business development and presales, leading both engineering and product strategy teams to scale Ellucian’s products for our global markets.

Vicky Gosling maintains standards, drives enhancement and supports innovation and transformation across the areas of digital learning and teaching and pedagogy, business services and data management. Her role is to ensure that the digital experience of Falmouth students, staff and other stakeholders supports best practices in user experience and user interface design. She also manages the digital portfolio of projects/programmes designed to deliver transformation in line with the university's strategies. As a champion of the One Falmouth digital approach, she is responsible for the delivery of centralised and integrated development, support and training across all the university's digital platforms. She joined Falmouth in 2016 from Bournemouth University where she managed a variety of digital transformation projects with a focus on user experience design, business process redesign and business efficiencies.

James Smith is Chief Information Officer at Birkbeck, University of London, where he is responsible for the delivery of Library and IT services that are relied upon by Birkbeck’s staff, students, and commercial customers. The services provided support student engagement with the life-changing educational opportunities that are central to the institution’s mission, internationally recognised research, and the administration of the enterprise. Prior to his current role, James has worked on corporate system implementation projects (on both the customer and supplier side), small and large scale institutional change projects, process discovery and improvement. James has been a UCISA trustee since 2021 and is chair of UCISA-CISG.

Chris is a senior programme/project manager at the University of Wolverhampton. Prior to this, Chris worked as a project management consultant – where he helped clients to set up and improve upon their portfolio, programme and project governance and structures. At work, he is particularly passionate about people and change management, but outside of that he is a huge football fan. Although he hasn’t mentioned much about his beloved Manchester United for the last few months….

Ian has spent 35 years working in the global Higher Education (HE) Sector. Starting his career at Coventry University in Finance and then Business Analyst roles, he was one of the founders of the EA Community of Practice under UCISA, to which he was appointed Chair in 2015. Ian envisaged and led the creation of a UK Capability Model that is today used in many universities around the globe. Ian currently works for Ellucian, where he assists higher education institutions to align strategic and operational goals, and to assess and improve user experiences through enterprise architecture.

Jessica Roberts is Head of Test and Transition at King's College London (KCL). Her tenure at KCL, which began in June 2016 with a modest team of three, has been marked by a remarkable transformation journey within the organization's test department. Jessica has been instrumental in driving change, particularly in her role overseeing testing, transition, and non-production environment management, playing a pivotal role in enabling KCL's digital transformation initiatives to succeed.

Under Jessica's leadership, her team has expanded to approximately 20 full-time engineers in test, transition and non-production environment management (NPEM). Jessica is currently leading the charge in adapting existing KCL test and transition processes to align with Scaled Agile principles, ensuring that KCL can effectively support delivery at pace at a larger scale. Furthermore, she's overseeing the implementation of test automation at scale across critical business applications, a crucial step in improving efficiency and effectiveness in KCL's testing procedures.

Richard Young works in the IT Services Department at Queen Mary University of London, as Assistant Director of Solution Development and Technology Enhanced Learning. He works closely with academic colleagues and students across Queen Mary to improve teaching, learning and assessment through technology, as well as with administration teams to help them improve their efficiency, effectiveness and service delivery.

Adrian Cooper is Business Solutions Architect and Field CTO for UK Public Sector for NetApp. In this role, he is responsible for developing technical relationships with customers and partners across the public sector to support them in their digital journeys and to get the most out of their data. Adrian has worked in the IT industry for more than 30 years, with the last 8 years spent at NetApp in Senior management roles in Solutions Engineering. Prior to that, he held Director-level roles at Memorex Telex, EDS Global Field Services, a&o and Simplexo.

Mark has been Assistant Director, Research Operations in Research Services at UCL since February 2018 having worked in the HEI research funding management sector for 23 years.

Lokesh is a freelance IT consultant with over 16 years’ experience and having spent the last 10 years in the HE sector in areas of Student Records, Curriculum Management and Timetabling. Lokesh has built all the CMIS interfaces as well as the online and mobile timetable applications at Loughborough University.

Mike has 20 years’ experience of academic timetabling in both FE and HE institutions. As Timetable Manager at Loughborough University, Mike is the senior strategic lead of the Timetabling team and has achieved a consistent top 10 ranking for timetabling in the National Student Survey (NSS) over 10 years.