Summary
Current role
Melanie has over six years' experience in administrative support and management at the department level at Imperial College. She is currently available for casual work assignments. Thanks to her broad experience, detailed in the section below and summarised here, she is able to offer her expertise in a wide range of areas, including research student administration, pre/post-award management, recruitment and personnel matters, project and event management, brand development and beyond.
If you need administrative support or consultancy, get in touch today to see how Melanie can help.
Previous roles
From 2019 to 2021, Melanie worked as the Department of Bioengineering's Student Programmes Manager & Department Process Development Manager, overseeing all PhD, MD(Res) and MRes administrative matters while also managing the implementation of process change and development across the Department.
From 2018 to 2019, Melanie managed the administrative matters of the Communications and Signal Processing group in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. As Senior Research Group Administrator, her varied oversight included recruitment, personnel, student and research (pre- and post-award) administration.
From 2016 to 2018, As the Department of Bioengineering's Research Operations Officer, she oversaw pre- and post-award administrative matters to help award holders comply with Departmental, College and sponsor conditions while effectively managing their research portfolios. This included
- preparing research proposal costings and supporting all aspects of the submission of funding applications,
- assisting in project account management, for example through the preparation of financial reports, and
- collating and quality checking the documents required for sponsor reporting, such as timesheets and financial cost statements.
In support of academic staff, Melanie acted as a conduit between the Department, Research Services, the contracts management team and HR for research proposal submissions and the management of awarded grants and contracts. In addition, Melanie supported the Department Operations Manager in aspects of strategic research financial administration, such as monitoring proposal submission rates and grant activities.
Along with the above mentioned responsibilities, Melanie provided more in-depth support of research centres and large research grants (i.e. those with values greater than £2m) as well as supervised research-funded recruitment and personnel activities undertaken by the Recruitment & Personnel Administrator. She also managed the Department's tuition fee and bursary payments, research- and studentship-related records and research-related webpages.
Before becoming Research Operations Officer, Melanie's time was shared between the Department as research administrator (80% FTE) and the Centre for Blast Injury Studies (CBIS) as its administrator (20% FTE). During this time, she provided a closer level of research- and finance-related assistance to the Centre while supporting a range of activities, from servicing governance meetings and coordinating seminars, conferences and large-scale events to facilitating relationship building both within and external to the Centre, for example supporting the establishment of new research and education networks. Maintaining the Centre’s online presence, creating its biannual newsletter and developing its brand through several media, Melanie enabled the promotion of the Centre’s work in clear and engaging ways and in line with its aims and strategic objectives.
Before moving into research and finance support, Melanie’s roles in Bioengineering included Departmental Secretary (2014-15) and Postgraduate Research Student Administrator (2015-16), giving her a broad understanding of a variety of operational processes and procedures. Her diverse background helps to facilitate her interests in research management and compliance as well as process development and improvement.