About the scheme

The STEP-UP digital technical champions scheme supports enthusiastic PhD researchers to engage their local research community with digital research technical topics, tools and ideas. The goal is to promote best practices and advance technical skills across STEP-UP’s four partner universities (Imperial, UCL, King’s College London, University of Westminster).

Some examples of what champions have done:

  • Acted as advocates for good practice in research software development, data management or the management and use of research computing infrastructure.
  • Ran surveys of colleagues to understand how they develop software, manage data or work with infrastructure in their research, and what challenges they face.
  • Investigated current use of digital best practices in their department/faculty/school/college.
  • Developed a factsheet for new PhD students in their department with key information about relevant digital resources for their discipline’s needs.
  • Ran coffee hour or clinic sessions to engage colleagues, answer technical questions and raise awareness of research software engineering, research data management and research infrastructure engineering.
  • Ran training workshops to deliver skills in key best practices.
  • Hosted a research technical showcase for their colleagues (e.g. with a stand in your building’s lobby or a specialist workshop) to highlight software, data and infrastructure services offered within your university to local colleagues.

2025 champions

Imperial College London

  • Nikolaos Giakoumoglou, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
  • David Tsang, Department of Chemistry

King’s College London

UCL

University of Westminster

Read about our 2025 Champions intake in a blog post from the University of Westminster

Apply to be a champion in 2026

See full details and find the application links