South Yorkshire branch: Committee

As well as running the branch, the committee organises the events programme and maintains links with local members, schools, colleges, universities and industry.

You can find out more about the committee below, or come along and meet us at the next South Yorkshire branch event.

Chair
Andrew Shaw MBCS

Andrew has developed a career in IT, following achieving a Bachelor of Science degree with Honours in Business Information Systems at Sheffield Hallam University, and is focusing on and developing a career in software testing.

He works as a software tester in Yorkshire and regularly attends networking events, as well as working with the committee to organise events for the South Yorkshire branch of BCS. He has also worked to develop the student and the Young Professionals group communities in Yorkshire, working alongside fellow BCS members, Young Professionals Group representatives and university students.

He has delivered professional talks to different universities, BCS branches and professional networking events, and continually strives to develop his own knowledge and the knowledge of the communities he works alongside. He works to promote the diversity within the BCS and the IT industry and makes opportunities to encourage others to develop in IT.

Outside of IT, Andrew's interests include Martial Arts, mental health awareness and stigma prevention, writing and travelling.

Vice Chair
Eva Barabas MSc(Eng) MBCS

Eva's CS education started when she was about 12 and was part of an after school group back in Romania where she wrote her first BASIC program. She liked it so much she decided to make a career out of it. She undertook a 4 year bachelor degree in Computer Science in English in Cluj-Napoca, Romania and won a scholarship to The University of Sheffield in 2006.

She fell in love with the city of Sheffield and decided to return to the University in 2010 to do her masters in Advanced Software Engineering after she gained some experience as a Software Developer doing outsourcing for Ordina Finance Solutions, a financial company from the Netherlands.

In Sheffield she learned about agile techniques and became the Quality Engineering team leader for Genesys Solutions, a company run by students from the university as part of their CS degree, building great, reliable software for real clients. After finishing her studies she started working as a Software Developer for epiGenesys, a University of Sheffield owned company who specialise in Ruby on Rails applications and who also mentors the students from Genesys Solutions. The student became a mentor in a year and she has enjoyed her continuously learning in her role for 2.3 years.

She moved on to work for NHS Choices in Leeds for the past 2 years as a Senior Software Engineer working on projects such as GP Search, Symptom Checker as well as campaigns for the Digital Campaigns team for Public Health England.

She joined the BCS as a student member and became a committee member of the South Yorkshire branch in 2012 as she wanted to be more involved in the tech community scene in the region. She also co-organises Sheffield Ruby User group as part of her giving back to the tech community that she believes has great potential.

In her free time she enjoys going to the cinema, try out tasty international food and visit the Peaks.

Secretary
Gavin Callaghan

Treasurer
Martin Beer

Events and Email Coordinator
Colin Smythe BSc FBCS CEng

Colin has a degree in Applied Physics and was awarded a PhD for his work on spread spectrum local area networks; both degrees were from the University of Durham. During the past 25 years he has worked in both the academic and the industrial world.

He has been a lecturer at the Universities of Durham and Surrey, worked for several years at Logica Ltd., was the founder and managing director of the systems consultancy Hyperion Systems Ltd., has acted as independent consultant to many private and public organisations, and has also given numerous industrially oriented training courses on communications and software engineering.

From 1992-1999 he was a member of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield where he was Head of Department and Professor of Computer Science. During the time at the University of Sheffield his research activity was focussed on the modelling and performance analysis of data networks, particularly those based on cable network architectures. At present he is a director and principal consultant of Dunelm Services Ltd. (a company that for the last twelve years has specialised in the provision of Information & Communications Technology (ICT) consultancy and training in the fields of data communications and software engineering) and eLoki Ltd (a company specialising in the technical and business development aspects of e-learning).

Since October 1999 Colin has been consulting for the IMS Global Learning Consortium. The IMS Global Learning Consortium is the World's premier e-learning specification development organisation. He is currently the IMS Chief Specification Strategist and as such he is responsible for the managing the development and maintenance of the full suite of IMS specifications.

During the last five years he has worked on a number of public and private sector e-learning projects and has given presentations on this topic in many parts of the world. He joined the British Computer Society (BCS) in 1999 at which time he was made a Fellow of the BCS and became a Chartered Engineer. He was Chair of the South Yorkshire branch of the BCS 2002-2004. He was Non-Executive Director of Digital South Yorkshire (d-SY) from 2003-2005.

Inclusion Officer
Shahrzad Zargari

Early Careers Advocate
Neil Bizzel

Neil is an entrepreneurial professional with a wealth of experience in IT service management, project management, consultancy and education. He is also the director of a start up online retail business.

Neil has worked with a number of high profile clients including BT and Sun Microsystems on the NHS National Programme for IT, HSBC and Nestle. His worked has helped his clients to improve their IT service management offerings by the delivery of Software, process and infrastructure projects.

He is Adult Instructor in the Army Cadet Force. As a Detachment commander he manages a team of seven adult staff running training for a detachment of 40 Cadets (boys and girls 13-18 years old).

Neil is an active individual keeping himself fit. He enjoys mountaineering, hill walking and cycling. He is currently logging mountain days towards the Mountain Leader award (Summer).

Committee member
Andy Hallsall

Committee member
Andrew Kerr

Committee member
Gregory Meyers

Committee member
Graham Silver-Ford

Committee Member
Lucian Tipi

Lucian has a strong IT and IS background. He has a degree and an MSc in Control Systems and Computing. Lucian started his career in Romania, where he has worked for the Romanian Army as part of the national service. After moving to the UK in 1997 Lucian has worked for Cap Gemini on a variety of IT and IS project across various client sites. He has moved into academia in 2001 and has worked for The University of Sheffield on building a central information system for a research institute until 2007. Lucian currently works for Sheffield Hallam University and he is active in IS and operational analysis.

Outside work Lucian enjoys movies and photography and has an interest in all things technological.

Committee member
Gavin Whitelaw

Interested in joining the committee? We welcome new committee members and anyone interested in joining are encouraged to come along to the next event to talk to us. Nominations for new members take place annually at the branch AGM.