The Campus Stars campaign has been launched to showcase the colleagues still working on campus during the lockdown and highlight the crucial work they do.

Andrew is a Virtualisation Systems Engineer for Information Services and has worked at the University for 11 years.

Andrew works with colleagues to maintain servers, storage and networking. He also monitors and responds to failed hardware alerts and downed systems.

During the pandemic, Andrew is on a rota for on-site work which not only involves hardware maintenance but also any access for Estates, such as fire system maintenance, air conditioning maintenance and door maintenance. This means working to minimise contact whilst also trying to minimise contact with engineers.

Andrew provides support to staff and student systems hosted on servers and is currently working on the installation of new Moodle MySQL servers. He also carries out maintenance on other services used across the University whilst also building new virtual servers, and assisting with other maintenance work on physical servers.

During lockdown, Andrew has spent his free time playing video games such as Mount and Blade: Bannderlord and watching the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit extended editions.

Andrew’s favourite thing about working at the University of Nottingham is knowing that his contributions through effective IT services help to further research and teaching.

Andrew’s message to the University community is to stay positive and to try and arrange regular Teams calls with colleagues, even if this is for socialising rather than to discuss work. Andrew appreciates everyone working remotely and enabling the University to continue operations during this difficult time.