Lesley Wright retires from STFC on 30th October 2020. After a varied career at STFC from analytic chemist to information retrieval developer, she has spent the last fifteen years working for UKERC as a software developer. She first started working on what was known as the UKERC Research Atlas in Phase 1 (in 2005) and since then has worked on it constantly as it has grown from being a simple list of energy-relevant projects to the multi-facetted Energy Data Centre which now exists.
It is a testament to her skill and expertise that it has operated without a break in service for over 15 years, and has now become a focal point of energy R&D – whilst users are mainly based in the UK as you would expect, it is noteworthy that users are based in many countries and states – from the very large to the very small – the smallest being the Vatican City!
In recent months she has been transferring her huge amount of knowledge about how the Energy Data Centre runs to two new members of the team – Catherine Jones and Peter Holt.
We wish her a long and happy retirement, as she devotes her energy full time to her other role: being a leading world-wide authority on Otter conservation and a member of the management team of world-wide IUCN/SSC Otter Specialist Group.
Click below to see the transformation of the Research Atlas over the past fifteen years: