Alex Hardisty

Alex Hardisty is Director of Informatics Projects in the School of Computer Science and Informatics at Cardiff University. He is a Chartered Information Systems Professional Fellow of the British Computer Society (BCS) and a Member of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). His current interests span applications of computing to problems in biodiversity informatics, including the engineering of large-scale distributed computing systems (e-Infrastructures) and the socio-technical issues of new technology adoption.

Alex coordinates the Biodiversity Virtual e‑Laboratory (BioVeL) project and leads work packages in two other projects concerned with developing research infrastructures: the Common Operations of Environmental Research Infrastructures (ENVRI) project and the Coordination of Research e‑Infrastructures Activities Toward an International Virtual Environment for Biodiversity (CReATIVE-B) project. All 3 projects are funded by EC FP7.

In the ESFRI LifeWatch preparatory project, he has been responsible for determining and planning the technical strategy of LifeWatch to engineer an infrastructure for biodiversity research that is fit for scientific purpose, open and based on widely available industry standards. He continues to advise the LifeWatch start-up countries. Alex is also chair of the Design Team for the 4D4Life project, putting the Species2000/ITIS Catalogue of Life onto a sustainable e-Infrastructure footing.

Alex is formerly a member of the UK’s JISC Committee for the Support of Research (JSR) and past-Chair of the Steering Committee for the Community Engagement and Support strand of the JISC e-Infrastructure programme. From 2002 – 2009 he was manager of the Welsh e-Science Centre at Cardiff University, where he helped establish the University’s Advanced Research Computing division. Prior to joining Cardiff University, Alex held positions at Ubiquity Software Corporation (now part of Avaya), PQM Consultants, Mitel Corporation and Ferranti Computer Systems, gaining extensive industrial experience of product development, software and systems engineering, international standardisation, consulting and management work in real-time computing systems.

In Micro B3 Alex Hardisty will give advice on e-Science environments and will be our liaison to the BioVeL project (www.biovel.eu) and the ESFRI LifeWatch programme (www.lifewatch.eu).