What's your name and job title?

Anastasia Thoma, EU Project Manager

Tell us a few words about your background:

Anastasia Thoma graduated from Lancaster University, UK, with a BSc in Biomedicine and MSc in Environmental and Biochemical Toxicology. She also holds a PhD in Health Sciences from Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, and an Associate Fellowship in Teaching and Learning awarded by the Higher Education Academy, UK. At the University of Sheffield, UK, Anastasia has also gained Postdoctoral Research experience in translational research focusing on neurodegenerative diseases. Anastasia is interested in project management and being involved in creative projects that can have a positive impact.

What organisation do you work for?

Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), Cyprus.

What does your organisation do?

Centre for Social Innovation (CSI) is a Research and Development organization which focuses on fostering social innovation that can bring about a positive change to local, national, regional and global contexts. CSI belief is that the four pillars of Social Interaction, Education, Development and Economic Rationalization coupled with fundamentally sound and sustainable solutions as well as disruption to streamlined solutions to systemic social problems can lead to creative solutions that impact significant change to the social fabric of every society. CSI is working closely to address social, economic and cultural challenges with governments, local administrative agencies, non-for-profit agencies, commercial entities, and educational institutions. CSI identifies and addresses systemic challenges through evidence-based research, state-of-the-art investigation of global, national, regional and local solutions, developing solutions by taking into consideration the local ecosystem, and cultural dynamics, meet the stakeholders' needs and implementing those solutions as CSI keeps constant vigilance to ensure continual feedback loop and adjustments. The areas of expertise are in the fields of social integration, intercultural education, Vocational Education and Training, labour, education planning and e-learning, project management, project evaluation services, product validation, and training.

What is your role in the Code4SP project? What are you currently working on?

Anastasia will mainly focus on providing excellent social support  for the implementation of the Code4SP project and particularly, training activities that have direct impact on vulnerable individuals on behalf of CSI.

Why is being part of the Code4SP project important to you?

Coding is undoubtedly a hard but currently a chief skill in various fields. It is extremely important to me that Code4SP recognises the importance of increasing the number of ICT experts in Mediterranean countries, including Cyprus, by developing training programmes, but also by supporting vulnerable socio-economic groups. This is extremely important to be taken into consideration given that vulnerable groups have limited opportunities to gain ICT skills, including coding and advance within the rapidly transforming digital world.

How do you like to spend your free time?

Reading scientific journals.