What is your job title, and what department do you work in?
I am the Head of Technical Operations in the Department of Life Sciences.
Why do you think the Technician Commitment is important?
Technicians have very varied roles across all disciplines in HE, and support for their visibility, recognition, career development, and sustainability has not been uniform across the sector.
The Technician Commitment initiative started in 2017 to address these issues, with Imperial as one of the first cohort of 35 signatories (now over 120). Universities and organisations that sign up have to produce an action plan, implement it, and report back within a three-year cycle to demonstrate how they are improving the status and profile of technicians and ensuring the sustainability of their technical workforce.
It applies to all types of technicians: core funded for departmental or university service support, teaching, grant research funded, workshop, and facility managers.
It is a national benchmark aiming to give greater prestige and parity for all technical staff. I find that many technical staff are humble about their fantastic skill sets, and universities are just becoming aware of the wealth of work they do in the background. I see the Technician Commitment as a mechanism for both technical staff and universities to better appreciate and celebrate their contributions to teaching, research and innovation.
What do you enjoy about being involved with the Technician Commitment?
The enthusiasm and camaraderie from technical staff within Imperial and across other universities working on the Technician Commitment make it easy to share ideas. This makes use of everyone’s best practice and also helps define where the common problems are for us all and what solutions we can work on together, e.g. Imperial has representation on national groups focusing on technical career development and regional networks for apprenticeships.
What has the Technician Commitment achieved at Imperial that you are most proud of?
That Imperial College London was given an Award of Impact at the Technician Commitment Signatory Event, Queens University, Belfast, on 14 May 2025, in recognition of our second action plan submission. A very special thanks must go to Ailish Harikae, Learning and Talent Manager and Naweeda Ahmad, Learning and Talent Coordinator for Apprenticeships & Technical Staff, for their impressive collation of Imperial’s data and information across all four Pillars of the Commitment for the submission.
Tell us something interesting you have discovered about technicians (past or present) at Imperial.
Anne Barrett, Imperial Archivist and Corporate Records Manager, had records about Imperial's technical staff going back many years.
What is your top tip for technicians who would like to progress their careers at Imperial?’
Network, network, network! Speak to other technicians in your department, Faculty and other universities at departmental meetings, Imperial or external network events (this counts as part of your professional development and training). Finding out what others are doing, what specialised training they did, what courses they attended, whether they did job shadowing or secondments, etc. This helps give you ideas about your own career.
Technicians that I have managed have gone on to be facility managers, part of a safety team, building managers, working in local government on science innovation after a PhD, lab managers, and working in spin-out companies as lab managers. I was a grant-funded research technician in a wide variety of disciplines (neuroanatomy, protein crystallography, electron microscopy, developmental neurobiology) before becoming a laboratory manager.
The career path can be as diverse as you want it to be.
Tell us something that people would be surprised to find out about you!
I indulge my creative side in making coloured glass fusions!