Graduate and student success stories

Find out more about our successful students and graduates - you could be one of them!
Graduate and student success stories

Kseniya Volkova 

"My current role is Senior iOS Developer at Monitise Create (formally Grapple) in central London. Apart from developing iPhone and iPad applications, my work also involves looking after my own team of 3 iOS developers and making sure that they are happy with everything, as well as giving them any technical help they require to do their jobs. I  also participate in scoping and time estimating meetings for new projects, even if I might not be the one developing that project. 

The highlight of my career so far would be creating my own project, which is a white-label application for estate agents and property portals. I created it all from scratch including design, application programming interface (APIs) and development. It's essentially one app, which I constantly improve and add to, but the APIs allow it to be created into many apps with just a change of a few settings and branding colours. It’s been amazing seeing my own creation being used by so many estate agents. 

The most important things I learnt from DAT are thinking outside the box and to become an all-around digital guru. Not many programmers can also be good at ideas and design. It was great to have a course with such variety."

 

Ruairi Glynn - interactive architect 

Ruairi Glynn is an installation artist, curator, writer and teacher. In August 2012 he exhibited his largest and most ambitious artwork to date, titled “Fearful Symmetry”, at the Tate Modern in London. This interactive installation brought together robotics, sound, and light, with techniques borrowed from puppetry to animate the newly opened Tanks Gallery. Ruairi has also exhibited work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Art Museum of China Beijing, Seoul’s Olympic Museum of Art, Sao Paulo’s Itau Cultural, Beall Center for Art + Technology in Los Angeles, the Madrid Art Fair, the Kunsthaus Graz and London Design Festival. Ruairi is currently Lecturer of Interactive Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, and Associate Lecturer on MA Textile Futures and MA Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins, University of Arts London. He also currently directs the Interaction Futures Research Cluster at the Bartlett School of Architecture. 

http://www.ruairiglynn.co.uk

Elixel

Without the teaching at Plymouth University, Elixel just wouldn’t exist. Not only do they strive to teach new and emerging technologies, they encourage students to be entrepreneurial and think big.

Becky Veater, Technical Director of Elixel.

Dan Efergan - digital animator 

Daniel Efergan has been the Creative Director of Digital at Aardman Animations for over five years. Within this role he spends a lot of time making games, forming online communities, inspiring kids to get involved in animation, developing multi-platform productions and solving other peoples’ digital problems. Dan was director of the Aardman team that won a BAFTA in New Media in 2011. Before joining Aardman, Dan was managing director of Subsub Skills and Production, a recruitment 'boutique' and production company and was both creative and technical lead on the Light Up Bristol digital arts festival. He was also the co-founder of the Submerge New Media Festival, a South West based festival celebrating the best digital new talent coming out of universities across the region. Dan is currently involved in The Tate Movie Project that makes use of digital communities, online tools and live events in a long-term production project. 
 


Rachel Pizer

"I'm about to embark on a new adventure in digital consulting. The last five years were spent working at Comic Relief, both heading up the digital team and on innovation projects looking to future trends in technology. It's great to be able to do what I love and know that it's all for a great cause too! 

The key skills I learnt at Plymouth that help me in my job are the mix of creative, design and technical, as well as an understanding of user behaviour. These are key to both understanding what the digital strategy should be and in delivering it with my team. I'm currently inspired by the wave of social entrepreneurs in technology and am very excited about some of the future applications technology could have in this space."