Patrick Audley // Identity Collected

I started working at the University of Dundee after I moved to the UK to be with Elizabeth. It was, in retrospect, fated to be. I was spending all my time in Elizabeth’s lab learning everything I could about molecular biology (thanks Elizabeth!) and invariably ended up bumping into the only other people on campus that had an interest in large scale computing. After a very short and informal interview I started in the Computational Biology Dept. with a larger role overseeing all the high-performance computing in the faculty. This doesn’t sound terribly interesting until you consider the research powerhouse that the Life Sciences Faculty contained — to me, it meant being involved in projects with a huge range of research and some incredibly interesting problems to solve.

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Shortly after we moved into the TD Tower (we took two floors in a rather nice office tower just a few blocks from our old office) we had what was, and still is, my most Halloween-ish Halloween at work. Usually you only get the occasionally really keen marketing person…

This was a very cohesive and fun time for myself and, I think, the rest of the staff at GT. The company was expanding rapidly in spite of the small series of setbacks. Those setbacks made it feel more real and only enhanced morale more. This was also a frantic period of growth and saw my own small department balloon to 6 people; that’s huge for a PKI group!

This was the next phase in GT’s evolution; a major staff increase. After the move we jumped from 30 employees to around 60. Some of what would become close friends joined while GT was here: Pam, Erin, Jason, Laura.

This was also where GT has it’s first major staff cut. We lost 25 people that Christmas when Bob Wolfe started as CEO. It was tough but it also crystallized the company and led to a very productive quarter.

Brian started here around this time as well in what was to be our second job together. I really enjoyed this year at GT and I was able to stretch and be challenged quite a bit as I had a chance to do many jobs relating to getting the new PKI department developed.

After the wild tribulations of L[Axion], this was a welcome change. Though it was another startup, it was also a smaller, more vibrant and infinitely more focused. GT was going somewhere, there was a plan and everyone was pulling together to make it happen. I really enjoyed working with all the people at the IBM Tower and we had a blast.