Darren Hoyland, PhD

Darren Hoyland, PhD has a long and varied work experience. In 2001, they began their career as an Assistant Biomedical Scientist at Leicester General Hospital. Darren then moved to Manchester Royal Infirmary in the same role. In 2001, they joined GlaxoSmithKline as a Pharmacologist and Study Director in Safety Pharmacology, where they gained experience in good laboratory practice, cell culture, data analysis, and other office and lab-based skills. In 2006, they worked as a Demonstrator at the University of Sheffield. From 2009 to 2012, they were a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute for Genetic Medicine at the International Centre for Life, constructing three-dimensional models of developing cardiac cushions. From 2013 to 2014, they were employed at iParadigms (creators of the Turnitin SAAS website) as a Junior and then Associate Quality Automation Engineer, building up an automation test framework and hardware infrastructure. In 2014, they began working for Canonical in the OpenStack Interoperability Lab (OIL), deploying many OpenStack clouds and executing thousands of tests per day. In 2017, they worked as a Platform Developer at Verne Global, creating a public-facing flask- and angular 6-based system to interface with OpenStack and deploy clusters optimised for high-performance computing. In the same year, they worked as a Python Developer at Bitposter, creating several admin pages and management commands to integrate and synchronise between their various microservices. In 2020, they joined Biorelate Ltd. as Vice President of Technology and was later promoted to Head of Engineering, leading both applications and platform teams. Darren furthered their efforts to consolidate the platform to single sources of truth and standardise on a set of core competencies. In their role as Head of Applications, they identified the cause of the company's slow response to customer needs and proposed a solution. As Product Manager, they were the direct line manager for four people, taking on extra responsibilities when the Head of Engineering left. Darren also listened to customers to identify their issues and pain points with the platform and coordinated the tech team to best resolve them.

Darren Hoyland, PhD began their educational journey in 1999 when they enrolled in the University of Leicester, earning a BSc in Biological Sciences: Cell Physiology & Pharmacology in 2001. Darren continued their studies at the University of Manchester, where they obtained an MSc in Computation/Informatics in 2005. Darren then completed their PhD in Computational Neuroscience and Electrophysiology at The University of Sheffield in 2008.