A happy Adam with wife Hong and daughter Felicity
The University of Cambridge has many quirks, and one of the nicer ones is that some ‘University officers’ are entitled to be awarded a Master of Arts (MA) degree as a result of their employment by the University. This is enshrined in Statute B II 2, for those who want to check.
Computer Officer Adam Hall received an MA under these provisions in a ceremony at Senate House on 29 April. As part of the ceremony, Head of Department James Keeler presented Adam to the Vice-Chancellor’s Deputy Mary Hockaday (Master of Trinity Hall), who conferred the degree. Both acts were completed using the prescribed Latin words which have been used for much of the University’s 800-year-history.
Adam joined the department in February 2020 – just before lockdown. “It was slightly odd because I had just started to get used to the department, and then ended up getting sent home and worked from home for a year,” he recalls. “When we started coming back, I had to relearn where everything was.”
As a computer officer here, Adam has had a wide range of responsibilities including programming, maintenance, infrastructure, developing new software and offering front line support. He notes proudly that he wrote the software for the online leave recording system and more recently the online leavers form, both of which have eased the administrative burdens for these two tasks.
Adam’s Cambridge MA adds to his already impressive list of degrees.
Warwick
Adam received his first Master’s degree after completing a four-year combined undergraduate and Master’s programme in Maths at the University of Warwick, known as an MMath. He then stayed on to complete an MSc and PhD at the Warwick Mathematics and Statistics Doctoral Training Centre, spending eight years in total at Warwick.
Move to Cambridge
Just before Adam finished his degree, his supervisor moved to Cambridge, and encouraged Adam to take up postdoctoral research at the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre at Addenbrooke’s. After that successful posting, Adam moved to Plant Sciences, where he worked as a postdoc for three years conducting research into nitrogen uptake in wheat crops, under the supervision of Professor Chris Gilligan.
By this time, Adam had married his wife Hong, whom he had met at Warwick, and they had a baby daughter. He says he was lured to the Department of Chemistry as a Computer Officer because he was looking for stability.
Adam will soon be leaving the department to take up a new position as a Python Automation Engineer with Morgan Stanley in London. He says he is looking forward to the new position, which involves modernising processes and moving services into the Cloud.
“I have really enjoyed the people here in the Department and the time spent here,” says Adam. “I’d love to stay here, but I am also ready to move to a position with more responsibility.”
“I was very pleased to be able to present Adam for his degree,” says James. “This was the first time I have done this and I was somewhat nervous over the Latin, but I think it came out more or less correct. All best wishes to Adam for his new post.”