The SEPnet Team

Professor Sir William Wakeham has a strong research and leadership based career. Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton from 2001-2009, his academic specialty is thermodynamics, particularly the thermophysical properties of fluids and intermolecular forces.

Professor Wakeham is involved in many government and academic pursuits, including being the chair of a Review of UK Physics which reported in October 2008. Until 2011 he was a member of the Council of EPSRC, and he is currently a Vice-President of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He took up his role as Chair of SEPnet in 2009.

James West graduated in Physics at the University of Oxford, and then completed a PhD in particle physics at Imperial College. After a 2 year postdoctoral position he joined IBM at its development lab at Hursley near Winchester. He held key senior management roles in software technical strategy, especially for the internet, Java, transaction processing and messaging middleware. James left IBM in 2010, taking up his current role as Executive Director for SEPnet.

Claire Potter graduated in Astrophysics from University College London, and has always had an interest in science and communication. She has worked in medical conferencing, higher education communications, and as a campaigns officer for flood awareness at the Environment Agency.

Claire is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and STEMPRA, and is currently undertaking research into corporate social responsibility in science and technology companies. She has been Director of Employer Liaison at SEPnet since early 2010.

Charlotte Thorley has developed and managed science education outreach programmes reaching across the UK and beyond. Her academic interest is the relationship between science research and education, founded on her MPhys in Physics with Astrophysics and MA in Museum Studies, both from the University of Manchester.

Charlotte developed the education strand of the first Manchester Science Festival before heading to London to become Education Outreach Manager at the Royal Society working on the Partnership Grants scheme. She moved to SEPnet in May 2009 where she is developing and growing outreach provision across the network.