RCC staff Dr Marlies Hankel and Martin Nicholls received UQ’s Above and Beyond in 2020 awards this month.
The honour is a one-off award scheme that seeks to recognise and acknowledge the remarkable achievements of UQ staff pivoting to support students’ learning in semester one of this year during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Martin, a Specialist Systems Programmer at RCC, helped establish an image processing pipeline that UQ students and staff could access and use via RCC’s desktop web interface for the Tinaroo high-performance computer.
Specifically, this enabled third-year School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences (SCMB) students to undertake the practical stream of their course online.
“Now, not only BIOC3000 [Structural and Synthetic Biology] students, but more UQ researchers as well can access Tinaroo via a web browser from the comfort of their own home at any time of day,” said SCMB Associate Professor Michael Landsberg.
As well as her work as a RCC eResearch Analyst, Marlies lectured first-year mathematics this year. She was acknowledged for her proactive response to the pandemic in swiftly shifting teaching online as students were forced to learn from home.
“I actually cried when I realised what the email was,” said Marlies about receiving the award news. “It is such a wonderful way to end the year.”
RCC congratulates both Marlies and Martin for this recognition of their excellent work at UQ.
See the full Above and Beyond in 2020 honour roll.