Mentors & Facilitators

Sam Ahern (Mentor & Challenge Owner: InfoSec Awareness)

Tweets @2standandstare

Experienced IT educator and STEM enthusiast. Can offer support with information security, HTML/CSS, Database design & SQL, UNIX, Little Python, Xamp.

Available at #LearnHack: throughout the weekend

Marina Melero (Mentor & Challenge Owner: LAIRN)

LAIRN director whose mission is to improve the access and quality of education world-wide. With a background in Engineering, has experience leading teams and facilitating groups, especially on technology-related projects and social entrepreneurship. Readily available to support the teams with any challenge, particularly on the fields of technology and sustainable development.

Available at #LearnHack: throughout the weekend.

Oli Pinch (Event Facilitator & Challenge Owner: Scaling Education)

Oli is the Training Manager in the Entrepreneurship team in UCL Innovation and Enterprise.

He leads extra-curricular enterprise and entrepreneurship training across UCL, including the Enterprise Boot Camp, Bright Ideas Challenge, Entrepreneurship Guest Lecture Series and a range of short courses for entrepreneurs.

Available at #LearnHack: throughout the weekend.

Jess Gramp, Digital Education (Event Facilitator & Challenge Co-Owner for Digital Education)

Available at #LearnHack: throughout the weekend.

Jim Tyson, Digital Education (Event Facilitator & Challenge Co-Owner for Digital Education)

Jim got distracted from his work in linguistics when he discovered you *can* program in the lambda calculus but it is too verbose. Has since blagged a living helping clever people learn to use dumb software.

Available at #LearnHack: throughout the weekend.

Nicole Rahimzadeh (Challenge Co-Owner for OneM)

After joining OneM, two and a half years ago as an intern, Nicole joined the team full-time after completing her studies in Psychology at City University London. Nicole acts as Project Coordinator at ONEm, getting involved in aspects of Marketing, PR, Events and HR.

Nicole was drawn to ONEm because of the vast social difference the service brings, improving people's lives with what they already have. In her spare time, Nicole enjoys playing musical instruments.

Available at #LearnHack: throughout the weekend.

Michaela Kurucova (Challenge Co-Owner for OneM)

Former UCL graduate, Michaela joined ONEm 2 years ago as a Business analyst after completing her studies. She has worked in different departments of the company touching upon various fields such as research & analysis, media, user experience and product development. Currently, she is the manager of the Support team and works with the Technical team on service development. In her free time, Michaela is a coffee enthusiast and dedicated yogi.

Available at #LearnHack: throughout the weekend.

Clive Young, Digital Education Advisory Team Leader (Session Host)

Clive has worked as a learning technology consultant in several universities, most recently with Imperial College London. He has led several UK and international projects on the pedagogic design of video and was an e-learning project evaluator for the European Commission. Clive is also an associate lecturer at the Open University tutoring on their MA in Online and Distance Education.

Available at #LearnHack: Saturday

Nataša Perović, Digital Education Advisor (SLMS) (Session Host)

Nataša has been working on e-learning development in medical, nursing and allied health sciences in higher education since 2006. Particular interests: blended learning, open educational resources, online videos in medical education, digital literacies and learning design. Nataša has a background in science, web development and teaching.

Available at #LearnHack: Saturday

Austin Chamberlain (Session Host)

Austin studied computer science and electronics at university, and started work in the system administration field. In the last few years he has moved into information security, mostly on the technical side.

Available at #LearnHack: Sunday

David Perez-Suarez (Session Host)

"I'm .... I'm a... I'm a person. Yes! that's right!!! But people bite, so don't think that's why I wouldn't bite. People sometimes get scared of researchers, software developers, geek... and I, normally - though belonging to all these groups, don't bite. At least not to strangers. That why I'll start asking some peoples name. Nowadays I'm not doing much research, I stopped last April when I joined the Research Software Developer Group in UCL. Here I write software to help researchers to do better research. I'm involved in open source projects (openastronomy, sunpy), in citizen science work (sunspotter) and I'm a official instructor of Software Carpentry which it has helped me to improve my Python teaching at UCL. I'm also a fellow by the Software Sustainability Institute."

Available at #LearnHack: throughout the weekend.

Aniel Bhaga (Facilitator)

Aniel Bhaga is a marketeer and digital native who enjoys working with people, online and offline. He has an innate passion for connecting and helping people realise their full potential.His background stems from Electrical Engineering and has moved through to sales, product marketing, social media, coaching andtraining and now as Global Community Manager at Nova. On the side he began his facilitation and moderation while at university while working with a youth organisation, AIESEC and has travelled the world, coaching, training and delivering talks on creativity, leadership, engagement and teamwork. His belief is that the world needs more authentic and humanistic leaders to drive us to a sustainable future.

Available at #LearnHack: Saturday & Sunday

Joris Van Doorslaer (Education Mentor)

Joris believes that creativity is sparked through experiences. He has led different non-profit organizations, such as a summer program for low-income children in his home region in Belgium and most recently traveled for 4 years as the Cast Manager of the global education organization Up with People. He has extensive experience in workshop facilitation and personal growth coaching. Currently active as the organizer of TEDxGhent and recently founded a new organization called Plus One: Unleashing Potential. Within the business world he has done marketing at Procter & Gamble & is currently creating a digital movement in Belgium as Growth Engine Program Manager @ Google.

Sanne Meert (Education Mentor)

Sanne has been education manager for the international non profit ‘Up with People’, leading international youth in personal development and leadership through workshops and coaching. She is now dedicated to bringing awareness on sustainability to kids and youth. She recently co-founded an organization to unleash people’s potential and wishes to inspire the world through her commitment at TEDxGhent. She is convinced that what the world needs right now is an educational revolution, focused on person-based experiential learning.

Steve Rowett, Digital Education (Event Facilitator)

Steve will be looking after learnhack.stream over the weekend and assist with event logistics.

Available at #LearnHack: Friday & Sunday

Karen Shackleford-Cesare, Digital Education Learning Technologist (Event Facilitator)

Karen is a member the Digital Education Services team. She joined UCL in December 2016 from the University of Roehampton. She, along with other members of her current team, supports and advises on the use of a range of technologies including the University's core learning and teaching applications namely, Moodle, Turnitin and MyPortfolio. From February 2017 she will act as service lead for the latter two.

Her professional interests include student motivation and engagement, e-assessment, (including peer and ipsative assessment and feedback data analysis). Also, improving the usability of, and productivity gains from learning technologies.

Available at #LearnHack: Friday/Saturday PM/Sunday PM