Rob Baxter joins DARE UK as Technical Lead
Rob joins the team from EPCC at the University of Edinburgh – a centre providing world-class supercomputing and data facilities and services for science and business – where he spent 29 years.
Rob graduated as a theoretical physicist from the University of St Andrews in 1989. He then spent a year in Cambridge doing a Master of Advanced Study in Mathematics and falling off punts before joining the University of Edinburgh. He completed his PhD in lattice QCD in 1993 and subsequently joined EPCC.
As Technical Lead for DARE UK, Rob will be leading the establishment of the technical requirements, use cases and implementation of a novel and sustainable national federated infrastructure for sensitive data research. This will build on the work already completed in the first year of the DARE UK programme.
“One of the most rewarding things I’ve done over the last few years is help develop trusted research environments (TREs) as safe spaces to enable research with public data for public good,” Rob says.
“My work with the Scottish National Safe Haven and the UK Outbreak Data Analysis Platform taught me a huge amount about how to design, build and run TREs securely – and how vital they are in enabling life-changing research while keeping people’s data safe.
“DARE UK’s mission to create a UK-wide network of TREs running in harmony, supporting research with all kinds of sensitive data, is absolutely compelling – and a really exciting challenge! Joining DARE UK as Technical Lead gives me a fantastic opportunity to bring my experience to this broader stage and help the UK realise its research potential.”
We are delighted to welcome Rob to the DARE UK team – his expertise will be invaluable to the design and delivery of a coordinated and trustworthy national infrastructure to support cross-domain data research for public good.
