ThinkWrite trainers

Pete Moore PhD

Director

ThinkWrite™ courses have grown out of Pete’s experience as a post-doctoral academic at UCL and then more than 15 years working as a freelance science writer, author and communications consultant. They are driven by a desire to help people develop efficient means of working out what they want to say, and then see how to present that information in a way that can achieve maximum impact.
Pete has led hundreds of courses on different aspects of writing, in the UK, The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Norway.

Pete Moore submitted his PhD thesis just over three years after starting the research project. His organised approach to writing large documents means he has authored and co-authored about 40 papers, and written over a dozen single-author books. Furthermore, this pace of work has not been at the expense of high standards – he has won six national awards for his writing and editing. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a member the Association of British Science Writers, the Society of Authors and Toast Masters International. He is a member of the Medical Journalist’s Association and was their chairman from 2005-2007.

Julie Clayton PhD

Associate trainer

With a PhD in immunology, Julia did four years' postdoctoral research in Los Angeles and London before embarking on a career as a freelance science writer. Her work is published in Nature, New Scientist and other scientific journals. She worked as an assistant producer for BBC television (for example, Horizon and Tomorrow's World), and leads training and development courses for SciDevNet.

Emma Weitkamp PhD

Associate trainer

Emma has a background in medical writing and public relations. Her research interests focus on the use of narrative as a means of communicating science. She enjoys taking science into a wide range of popular genre including theatre and cartoon comics. She is also supervising a PhD student investigating communication issues around climate change.

Gareth McHale

Associate trainer

With almost 30 years experience as a Royal Navy Officer, Lt Cdr Gareth McHale has developed first class communication skills, both written and oral. He has extensive experience in training as a qualified helicopter navigation instructor, and has spent three years delivering both hands-on and classroom training to student aircrew. His training experience was further broadened as the Commanding Officer of Bristol University Royal Navy Unit where he focussed on training undergraduate members of the Royal Naval Reserve.

In addition, Gareth is recognised as a proficient public speaker, with seven years membership of the multi-award-winning Northavon Speakers Club. Gareth has won numerous public speaking contests and is the 2009 Toastmasters International UK and Ireland champion, and was the UK representative in the 2009 World Championships held in the USA. As well as being a proficient speaker, Gareth has experience mentoring and training other people as they develop their confidence when standing before an audience.