Hamish Cunningham – CIP (chief irritating person)
…a Professor of Computer Science, and used to hope that as time passed he would get older and wiser, but it seems that in fact he just gets odder and wider. He has been a software engineer, researcher, open source developer and Chief Irritating Person of the GATE team and (from July 2025) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield. He has been Principal Investigator on some 25 research grants, in 2014 he ran a successful crowdfunding campaign to produce a mobile power board for the Raspberry Pi, and in 2024 the unPhone went on retail sale. He believes that open tech has a contribution to make to sustainability and resilience, and that political democracy is proving incapable of saving the planet due to our complete lack of economic democracy. He has been lead developer on projects including:
Mathilde King – Project Volunteer & Web Designer
Hello! I’m a biochemistry student with a passion for the outdoors—camping, hiking, swimming, biking, you name it. Being part of the aquaponics setup process has been such an exciting and rewarding experience, and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to see it all come together. Before this project, I knew very little about aquaponics. I had no idea it could be such a practical and sustainable alternative to traditional agriculture, especially in urban environments. It’s incredible to witness how the natural symbiotic relationships we study in science can be applied so effectively at home to grow food more sustainably.
Gareth Coleman – Engineer
Electronics is a real passion for Gareth—he has had it as a hobby since a young boy, and has been fixing computers for fun for the past 10 years. Still he really got serious about it 5 years ago, when he was asked to review an aquaponic monitoring system for the Incredible Aquagarden, which gave him the idea of building one himself: the first WaterElf. Working together with Hamish, he has designed several versions of the device since then, refining and improving it with each generation. Gareth believes that aquaponics is a good thing in the world, which offers the double benefit of being an exciting technical challenge and a potential part of a low carbon future, and he wants to make it more common by making it an easier, more fun and social activity. He thinks that putting things on the internet helps people grow their own food by making it a community activity, where they can share successes and failures, tips and tricks. Before he got involved in aquaponics, Gareth studied experimental psychology at Oxford, after which he worked in psychiatric hospitals and also studied occupational therapy for a while. A real good-doer, Gareth is involved in several volunteering projects: he is helping out asylum seekers with Assist, cooks meals, and fixes computers and other electric appliances for charity, just to mention but a few.
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