Janice Hart has a Business and Marketing degree from the University of Westminster. She has extensive UK and international marketing and sales experience in the telecoms, tobacco and conference industry. Janice worked at the University of Hertfordshire for 12 years in the careers and business development teams. More recently she provided consultancy for Nottingham Trent University careers and placement service. She recently returned to the University of Hertfordshire to focus on the newly formed SEPnet employer liaison role.

Sharron, an Open University alumna, is the Employability & Employer Engagement Advisor at the OU.  Before joining the OU Sharron worked as the Internships & Project Manager at Cranfield University where she successfully led their Master’s in Management Internship programme by sourcing and securing paid internship opportunities for postgraduate students.  Sharron now works within the Open University’s academic team where she supports the School of Physical Science’s employability and employer engagement activity.

Jana has Masters degrees in English and Education, as well as, a PGCE. She has fifteen years’ experience in the HE sector, with a focus on student experience and training. She has previously worked as a teacher but found her focus in student support and engagement. She has worked at the director level at three institutions, embedding employability skills and spearheading student training initiatives. Jana is now utilising her career experience by driving forward the employer engagement strategy within Royal Holloway’s Physics department.

Sue trained as a translator in her native Germany, from where she moved to the UK in 2001. She initially worked as a Bilingual Travel Sales Consultant. She came to the University of Southampton in 2005 where she held a variety of administrative roles across many departments and disciplines, from event organisation through to research and facilities management. Between 2020 and 2022 she took a career break and completed a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing at the University of Winchester. Sue joined SEPnet in March 2023, where she is be responsible for employer liaison and placement support for undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Emma Hallatt has a management degree from Birmingham City University and having completed a year in industry herself, understands that placements are an ideal opportunity not only to progress academically but also develop as an individual. She has nineteen years’ experience of working in the HE sector, where ten years were spent supporting STEM undergraduate students with a particular focus on placements. Emma has a Foundation Certificate in Coaching Skills and has applied this to mentor students throughout the recruitment process. She is presently studying Teaching and Learning in Higher Education to support her work in the classroom setting. She recently joined the University of Sussex, to focus on supporting all levels of undergraduate and post graduate students in employability within the School of Mathematics and Physical Sciences and the SEPnet employer liaison role.

Melvin is a senior lecturer in physics at the University of Portsmouth and his work focuses on  experimental and theoretical studies of applied and fundamental physics. Melvin graduated with a BSc (Hons) and MSc degrees in Physics from the University of Bucharest, and received a PhD in Physics from the University of Central Lancashire in 2002. Previous appointments include two postdoctoral fellowships at the University of York, senior R&D scientist at Seagate Technology (a world leading high-tech company) and over six years as Higher Research Scientist at the UK National Physical Laboratory

Costis is a Reader in Theoretical Physics at the Centre for Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics and Astronomy. My work has focussed on various aspects of supersymmetric/superconformal field theories and their relation to String/M-theory. I hold an undergraduate diploma from the University of Patras (Greece), an MSc from Durham University and a PhD from Queen Mary University of London. I have previously held postdoctoral positions at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (India), King’s College London and Rutgers University (USA).