Recently, we caught up with Fergus McClean, one of the Data Scientists at the Hartree Centre North East Hub. Fergus has been involved in a wide number of collaborative data projects and our workshops too.

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Interview with Fergus, Data Scientist at the Hartree Centre North East Hub

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Can you tell us about your role?

I’m a data scientist based at the National Innovation Centre for Data within the Catalyst building in Newcastle upon Tyne. My role within the Hartree Centre North East Hub is to work with companies on 12-week collaborative data projects to help them solve a business problems using technology. I have worked with a range of different technologies and organisations to develop prototypes that can be used to demonstrate concepts and test ideas. LLMs have been a very popular area of work for us as organisations try to keep up with the pace of development in this field. We help organisations to clearly define and scope their projects, take them through the development process with opportunities for upskilling, then reflectively review progress and possible next steps.

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What is your favourite part of a project?  

I enjoy the moment when you start to see promising results from whatever you happen to be developing. I’m happy to say that this has occurred multiple times when working on Hartree Centre North East Hub projects. There can often be a lot of uncertainty around whether an approach will actually work, and everyone is always very excited when good outputs start appearing. Sometimes it can be a small change or idea that finally makes everything fall into place. Then it’s a matter of refining and testing to improve on what has been created.  

I also like the process of getting iterative feedback from the companies we work with and incorporating their rich subject area knowledge into the prototypes we build together.

Learn more about our Data Projects here.

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What advice do you have?

I always suggest that the focus should be on the business problem first, and technology second. It’s always tempting to jump straight into the technology, but we encourage organisations to take a step back and think about what problem they are really trying to solve.  

I would then say, you need to be very clear and specific about how your suggested technology would address the business problem and what impact that would have for your organisation. We are also biased towards riskier projects as we feel that we are providing a good opportunity to explore ideas that would normally involve too much risk.  

Finally, you need to have some data. If you don’t have data then I would start thinking about how you can start collecting the data you need to solve your business problem.  

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What is a fun fact about you?  

I have lived in every country in the UK, apart from Wales. I’m passionate about whitewater kayaking and can often be found on the river.

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Get Involved

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Need to speak to us directly? Drop us an email at hello@hartreenortheast.uk

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