This panel brings together experienced professionals to discuss career growth, transitions between academia and industry, and the skills needed to stay relevant in a fast-changing world. Panelists will share insights on key career decisions, mentorship, upskilling, and the non-technical skills essential for success. Whether you're exploring new opportunities or looking to advance in your field, this discussion will provide valuable perspectives on building a dynamic and resilient career.
Panelists
Michaela Carew
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Decrypthut.
Michaela is the Founder of Decrypthut, an edtech startup that is dedicated to revolutionising the education landscape by providing tailored coding courses and workshops in person and online, with specific focus on accommodating individuals with neurodivergent learning styles and special educational needs (SEN). Through hands-on workshops and engaging courses delivered across the UK, Decrypthut is giving people with no prior experience the confidence and skills to break into tech no matter their circumstance.
Now leading a growing team at Decrypthut, Michaela is focused on expanding access to tech education nationwide, ensuring that anyone, no matter their background, has the opportunity to learn how to code from ground zero and build a career in the tech space with confidence.
Madhuparna Datta (Cadence)
Madhuparna is an EDA and VLSI expert with over 25 years semiconductor industry experience, who has worked across UK, India and Sweden. She started off with PCB & FPGA design in Telecom at C-DoT, and then moved to the EDA industry at Cadence Design Systems where she has worked across Silicon-Package-Board as well as Digital Design and Implementation product lines. Currently an AE Director with people management role along with overall technical lead for digital and signoff technical campaigns across the region, involving CPU, GPU and system IP design on all the advanced nodes including 16nm, 7nm, 5nm, 3nm etc. She is a SWE Global Ambassador and founded SWE Cambridgeshire affiliate in September 2022, the first global SWE affiliate in UK, which helps provide networking and professional development opportunities for local engineers. She won the Electronics Weekly "Women Leaders in Electronics Awards 2024" for ‘Mentor of the year’ and was finalist for ‘Leader of the year’ and ‘Woman of the year’. She is currently a trustee on the UKESF board as there is great alignment on our values and approaches towards encouraging more young people to study Electronics.
Hannah Richardson (nee Murfet)
Microsoft Research.
Hannah has a medical biochemistry and laboratory background, and is a well-qualified regulatory and quality assurance professional. Her career covers significant experience with a range of medical devices and pharmaceutical products, including software systems, in vitro diagnostics, biologics and drug delivery systems. She has strong project management experience, including business improvement and regulatory implementation initiatives.
Hannah is responsible for managing the health data protection and compliance program in Health Futures. She works collaboratively with the research teams to ensure regulatory compliance across a number of projects, predominately focused in the area of artificial intelligence in healthcare.
Rosemary Francis
Entrepreneur, Engineer, and Fellow at the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Dr Rosemary Francis is an entrepreneur and Computer Scientist. Following a PhD in Computer Architecture at the Computer Science department at Cambridge University she founded Ellexus, the I/O profiling company. Ellexus made software that monitored and profiled high performance applications on supercomputers. She ran Ellexus for ten years before selling the company to Altair where she took on the role of Chief Scientist for High Performance Computing. She is a member of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, an educational charity that promotes access to technology education and digital making.
