Guy Grant Research associate, Unilever Cambridge Centre for Molecular Informatics, department of chemistry, Cambridge University

Job advertised in The Times Higher , March 19, 2004

Guy Grant is in the enviable position of having a wealth of research data and of teaching some of the best students he has ever come across.

As a computational chemist, recent advances in computing have placed him in the happy position of having too much data.

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"Computational chemistry and molecular modelling give a detailed understanding of chemical reactions," Dr Grant said.

"But recently, Linux-based computer clusters have dramatically improved productivity, giving access to serious computing that is relatively cheap.

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What should we do with all the data? How do we manage the data sets?"

Moving to Cambridge from Oxford University was a good opportunity for Dr Grant to build a research group from scratch. After surviving a "typical competitive interview" with 12 representatives of the university and college, he is settling in and making comparisons with Oxford.

"The most interesting thing is that I get access to very good students.

They are generally better than at Oxford and the average level is higher," he said.

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Dr Grant believed this was largely due to differences in the tutorial system. "In Oxford, tutorials are taught in spite of the course syllabus set by the university, which leads to a schizophrenic existence for students. Tutorials are very theoretical and students do a lot of reading and self-teaching.

"In Cambridge, things are a bit more centralised, with work set from lectures for tutorials. Students are served well, fewer drop out and they know where they stand."