😎 Hari's home on the Internet

All about me

Thanks for being here! This is a post to share a bit more about me - my story to date, my interests, hobbies and anything else I feel worth sharing.

I don’t really have any clear labels that I use to describe myself, so I find it easiest to just present what I do and think about, and go from there. You can read this almost like a conversational CV.

My story

Early stages

I never know how far back to go with this but I’ve found a useful starting point is university.

I studied Maths and Philosophy at the University of Bristol, completing the MSci programme in 2018 (half arts degree but still get the MSc 😎). This degree was perfect for me, allowing me both the rigourous, formulaic approach to maths, and the space to develop writing and arguments in philosophy. The only degree I thought was maybe slightly cooler was Physics & Philosophy, but not enough to have any regrets!

Whilst at Uni I also got involved with a bunch of student societies, primarily Bristol Raising and Giving (RAG) and the Student Council. I also ran in the SU elections in my third year but came second :( see the videos below for my campaign vid - it was one shot and I am v proud of it!!

In the summers of University I worked at Windsor Mountain Summer Camp in New Hampshire. The older I get, the more I am realising how incredibly foundational this environment was for me to learn lessons of love, trust, compassion, and patience. I learned how sacred these kind of spaces can be, and how everyone should have access to them.

Straight out of Uni I worked in an operational consultancy in Oxford, on a Grad scheme learning about business operations - finance, recruitment, legal and the like. Enough about that!

Pyxium - a first big project

I left that job in December 2019 - note to all, don’t leave jobs at the beginning of a pandemic if you want job security!! I moved back home and the lockdown in the UK gave me the opportunity to work on something I’d been thinking about for a while - a learning platform that is a) pedagogically sound and b) actually focuses on your learning, rather than you buying courses.

I used the time I had to learn programming and launch Pyxium. Both from my experience chairing student council meetngs at Bristol and seeing students debate critical issues without fundamental understanding (e.g. debating trans rights but not understanding the difference between sex and gender), and seeing a lot of the fallout from George Floyd's murder (loads of white people saying ‘how do I learn about racism?’), the focus of the platform became social justice courses, teaching the key background information around topics like race, gender, immigration, human rights, climate justice and more.

The premise of the platform is in essence pretty simple. Provide evidence-based, sourced learning experiences on these topics, and the space for people to learn in their own time, discuss with each other and improve their understanding. To learn things like the origins of the term race, the difference between sex and gender, the different between refugee status and seeking asylum. All intended to form an accurate baseline from which deliberative conversations about social issues and social policy can stem.

I really enjoyed building the platform, and met and worked with incredibly inspiring people along the way. The platform was free and was not making any money, and all instructors who I collaborated with to make courses (approx. 30) were all doing so on a voluntary basis - it was beautiful.

We had over 500 users on the platform and had given demos in schools to see how it could fit in with the curriculum (the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, both from teachers and students - piece of feedback that stands out from a students is ‘we never get to talk about these issues anywhere else in school’), and businesses as part of EqUaLiTy DiVeRsItY aNd InClUsIoN tRaInInG, but I unfortunately hit a bit of a critical/burnout point of needing to decide how I was going to fund it to make it sustainable, and not being able to land on a model I was ready to commit to.

As a result the project went on a resourcing pause (no-one is currently working on it - if you’d be interested in contributing there’s loads to do please get in touch!), but is still live and free to access here: https://app.pyxium.co/courses

Next steps - public research

Working on Pyxium had given me an intro the technical world and I wanted to build on it, and so I joined the Alan Turing Institute (the UK’s national institute for data science and AI) as a Research Application Manager (RAM).

This is a new role within research, focused on finding real-world use-cases and users for the Turing’s research outputs - we are a publicly funded Institute, so for me the driver for my role has been to make sure we are actually seeing positive societal and public change and impact, which reflects a positive and trustworthy use of public funds.

I’ve been working on the Data Safe Haven project, which is focused on building infrastructure for working with sensitive data safely. So if you’re NHS record is being used in a research study, you know it’s safe.

This role has really pushed me, and I’ve worked with some incredible people! It’s been fascinating to work on a small team developing infrastructure with national implications, and working with people across academia, industry, the NHS, government and more. Higlights include being a co-Investigator of a multi-institute project building a Standard Architecture for TREs, and helping co-found the UK TRE Community.

My team is part of the Tools, Practices and Systems programme at Turing - we focus on making sure research is open, reproducible, collaborative and representative, amongst many other things! I have learned so much about the important of co-creation, empowerment, representation and advocacy from this role, and it has massively taught me the potential of technology to liberate rather than purely exploit ✨

And now?

As of writing, I am wrapping up my time at the Turing - a few different factors are motivating this, but a big one being feeling quite burned out and short of time in London. I have learned so much over the first few years of my CaReEr, I am now looking to take some time out to reflect, learn more, meet new people…

…and write!

My interests

I consider myself to have a broad range of topics I am interested in, hence my unwillingness to silo my curiosities with labels. Nevertheless, some overarching themes I am thinking about at the moment, which reflect what I write about:

And lots more! If any of that sounds cool for you I’d love to chat!!

Hobbies

Some things I am trying to do/like doing in my spare time:

Resources

Here is a bunch of stuff that I have done/been involved with that already exists on the internet. See my projects page for things I am more actively involved with :)

Videos & recorded presentations

Writing

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