Prof Alan Miller, FRSE, FInstP, FIEEE, FOSA

Alan has been CEO of SUPA, and Director of our Graduate School since 2015, having played a central role in the creation and launch of SUPA in 2004. He is a physics graduate of the Universities of Edinburgh (BSc) and Bath (PhD).

His career in teaching and research in photonics and semiconductors took place in research centres across the UK (Bath, Heriot-Watt and St Andrews Universities and the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment Malvern) and the USA (University of North Texas in Denton, and CREOL at the University of Central Florida in Orlando). He has also held senior management positions as Head of Physics & Astronomy and Vice Principal for Research at St Andrews, followed by Deputy Principal and Pro Vice Chancellor for Research & Knowledge Transfer at Heriot-Watt University until 2015. Alan was co-creator in 2009 of a successful academic leadership programme, “Scottish Crucible”, which expanded its geographical reach in 2021 to become “European Crucible”. Alan also serves as a Board Trustee of the Scottish Universities Summer Schools in Physics (SUSSP) and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.

Sean Farrell

Sean is an E-Learning Technologist based in Heriot-Watt University. He provides training and support for staff and students using video conferences to provide Graduate School courses, maintains the SUPA webserver and My.SUPA website and supports the SUPA video conference facilities. Sean initially worked for SUPA while it was being established between 2006-2011 and has re-joined us from 2018.

Sean splits his work between SUPA and Heriot-Watt, where he develops web sites and SharePoint sites for EPS. He has a PGCE from Glasgow University and studied Physics in Edinburgh University and has previous worked in software test development and finance.

Dr Vicky Ingram

Vicky has been one of the SUPA Graduate School Coordinators since 2017. She has worked in academia for nearly a decade, starting as a researcher (in building energy physics) before moving into researcher development in 2013, initially working across disciplines at Heriot-Watt University; now working within a single discipline across multiple institutions.

Vicky leads on the Comms side of things for SUPA, providing the newsletter and social media content, but you’ll also find her working on the funding that SUPA offers (for travel, distinguished visitors, events etc), engaging with student focus groups, liaising with the Graduate School Committee, organising events, and promoting equality, diversity, inclusion and accessibility across SUPA.

Dr Linda Hadfield

Linda is one of the SUPA Graduate School Coordinators. She helps deliver SUPA events and leads on the programme and catalogue of SUPA courses. She has interviewed a number of people with connections to SUPA for The Way We Work series of podcasts on careers. Linda also works with the Intelligent Sensing & Measurement Centre of Doctoral Training, working closely with individual PhD students on their progression, career planning and events.

Prior to SUPA, Linda held roles supporting researchers to do outreach at the University of Edinburgh, and at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Jamie McIntyre

Jamie administrates a wide variety of SUPA activities. These include procurement, arranging meetings of our various committees, organising the SUPA Graduate School timetable, ensuring the smooth running of our events, liaising with lecturers and students on timetabling, enrolment, My.SUPA profiles and any other questions they may have. If you email our admin team, Jamie or Marjory are likely to be the first people to handle your enquiry.

Marjory Walker

Marjory is an Administrative Assistant within SUPA and has been in this role since 2018, working on wide and varied admin-related activities in SUPA. An experienced PA/Administrator, educated to degree level, with a BA in Business Studies, previously she was a PA at professorial level within University of Glasgow for 17 years.