Simon Hettrick
Deputy Director and Policy Lead
Professor Simon Hettrick is Deputy Director of the Software Sustainability Institute. He is is responsible for the Institute's policy research and campaigning.
He works with stakeholders from across the research community to develop policies that support research software, the people who develop that software and the researchers who rely on it. Simon's research focuses on the use of software in the research community with the aim of understanding practices and demographics. In this role, he conducted the first study of software reliance in academia.
Simon is a passionate advocate for Research Software Engineers. He orchestrated a campaign to gain recognition for this community, which has grown from a handful of people in 2013 to a substantial international community numbering in the thousands. He was the founding Chair of the UK's Association of Research Software Engineers and was a founding Trustee of the Society of Research Software Engineering and its Treasurer. He was treasurer of the RSE conference 2016-2019.
He is Chair of the Hidden REF which is a campaign to change the way researchers think about academic recognition. The campaign aims to celebrate all research outputs and everyone involved in their creation.
Simon is one of the Directors of the Southampton Research Software Group based at the University of Southampton.
He is a member of the e-Infrastructure Strategic Advisory Team for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, a member of the UKRI talent panel college, the Projects Peer Review Panel for the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the Digital & Data Infrastructures Focus Group for the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Data Science Strategic advisory board for the Medical Research Council, the advisory panel for Artificial Intelligence and Informatics at the Rosalind Franklin Institute, the steering committee for the Computational Science Centre for Research Communities, the steering committee for the DiRAC supercomputer, an Advisory Board member for the Society of Research Software Engineering, the MiTALENT project and the data-science journal, Patterns. He has a background in physics and patent law.