Pam Candea, Surefoot lead
Change isn’t just about technical matters – it’s really all about the people. Pam grew up in Detroit in the 1970’s, witnessing the effects of industrial pollution on the beautiful natural heritage of Michigan, and then moved to London in the 80’s, seeing first-hand the effects on people and on the environment of unbridled materialism. After leaving corporate life, she turned her attention to the far more personally meaningful goal of promoting sustainability through helping others build resilience. Pam believes that the best way to effect real change is to empower others to change themselves. That is exactly what HeatHack seeks to do.
Jean Carletta, HeatHack lead
Jean has spent most of her career as a university researcher thinking about how people struggle to use technology and how to use data and observation to understand complex systems. Frustrated with how little her research projects had to do with the real world, in 2009 she decided to apply her skills as a volunteer to think about why a local church had such high gas bills and was still stone cold. HeatHack grew from there. Jean’s special area is heating controls, where small changes can make a big difference. She has been involved with Surefoot since around 2012, when she joined one of their Carbon Conversations groups and then became one of their group facilitators.
Andrew MacOwan, Engineering Adviser
Andrew MacOwan, BSc (Hons) MSc CEng MEI is a Chartered Engineer with 35 years experience in engineering consultancy. Andrew MacOwan is retained by the Church of Scotland as an independent heating consultant carrying out surveys of premises in order to recommend heating and energy efficiency improvements. He has surveyed over 600 church buildings and been responsible for dozens of replacement heating systems, including heat pumps, in dozens of churches and halls. A recent example is a design for Iona Abbey.
Colin Kerr, Thermal Monitoring
Colin worked for Standard Life for 42 years as a system designer and actuary. Now retired, he is a STEM ambassador with the Digital Education programme at the Hearts of Midlothian’s Innovation Centre. Before the pandemic, he was also holding “Coding Masterclasses” with Dalry Primary School. He is a director (and tech support volunteer!) for Ladders4Action. In his spare time, he has constructed a variety of home IoT devices such as a battery-less rain alarm (to reduce tumble dryer use), portable air quality monitor, automated house control, and the thermal monitoring for community buildings for us to use in our community programme.
Rohan Kumar, Software intern
Rohan is a third-year student at the University of St Andrews pursuing his undergraduate degree in computer science. As an undergraduate research assistant, he has been involved in exploring useful software technologies and automation tools for HeatHack. We are grateful to St Andrews for gifting us his support! He has had an increased interest in climate change and sustainable development since COP26, and is hoping to be a part of more climate change prevention activities in the future. Building websites, competitive programming, playing chess, and cycling are some of his favourite hobbies. He is currently involved in a five-person startup called XChanted.
Kevin Doherty, Service design
In Kevin’s day job, he designs and develops “Internet of Things” ecosystems. With a background in Computer Science, he became interested in the human-facing side of the computing equation while working as a software engineer. Kevin’s involvement with HeatHack began through a dissertation project at the University of Edinburgh. Using service design methods for social innovation, he explored the possibility of the ‘Do-It-Yourself’ style HeatHack service that underpins our community programme. He spent time interviewing church community groups throughout Scotland, finding out about their experience heating their buildings. This culminated in a series of co-design workshops producing and testing a working service blueprint of what would become the ‘HeatHack in a box’ idea behind our new programme. When not designing professionally, Kevin has a personal interest in writing about the usability of everyday objects, designs for ageing, and can be found playing live music on weeknights.