Careers Angel Profile: Edwin Hancock
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| Name | Edwin Hancock |
|---|---|
| Email Address | erh@cs.york.ac.uk |
| Industries/Sectors | Education & Academia |
| Employer | University of York |
| Position | Professor of Computer Science |
| Experience | 30-35 years (approx.) |
| Degree | Physics (graduated in 1977) |
| Other Qualifications | Ph.D. High Energy Physics |
| Internships | |
| Information | Trained in particle physics (PhD and five years as postdoc) and then moved into computing in 1985 (as a postdoc on a project under the Alvey programme). Trained 'on the job' in computer vision, pattern recognition and image processing. This built on the computing skills I gained rather informally in physics research. Did some part-time OU teaching (relativity, cosmology, astronomy) to gain lecturing experience. Got my first real academic job at York in 1991. Run a research group of 4 academics and 20 reseachers. Also have overall responsibility for departmental research. |
| Things I Wish I'd Known | High energy physics and computing are very different fields. Even when I left particle physics the experimental collaborations were large (50); now they are huge (500). This meant that you didn't get much experience of bringing in grant money or directing research programmes. By contrast, computing is a much younger discipline and, to be honest, the scope for doing original work is much greater. Glad I did it this way. I got a pretty rigorous training in physics and mathematics. I use this all the time in my research. I even use the quantum mechanics that Mike Pennington and Alan Martin taught me (we have a research programme in quantum computing). |