Pete joined BAS in 1990 as Communications Manager for Halley4 after a BSc from Lancaster University and 4 years at Plessey Research Caswell. This was the final wintering season for Halley4 and afterwards he wintered at Halley5 and another final winter season, this time for Signy base in 1995 which switched to summer operations from this point.

In 1997 Pete joined BAS Cambridge as PC support and is now Head of the Windows/AD team.

In 2007 he received a Polar Medal

Work for BAS IT involves supporting science cruises in both Polar Regions and providing admin computing for Cambridge and remote staff. There is heavy reliance on virtualisation to achieve robust IT systems capable of running with minimal intervention for an entire year.

Some of our work is the same as you would see in any mid size organisation, so for example, we have storage, backup, patching and admin software like Microsoft Office. But some of our work is unique to the challenges of polar research and we have evolved unique solutions to overcome technical issues. I doubt there are few IT jobs as interesting.