Branden is our VP Product, known online by the mysterious alias of “omphe”.  To pronounce it, he explains, imagine being hit in the gut with a sack full of marshmallows.

How long have you been with Mendeley for?
Since May 2012

Where did you work before coming to Mendeley ?
I was a tech contractor so I’ve really worked just about everywhere:  AMEE, Imano, Dennis Publishing, Capita, HomeServe etc, etc. But my first career was as a dancer and I toured the world working with Rambert Dance Company, San Francisco Ballet, Boston Ballet and more.

What made you apply for a job at Mendeley?
Paul Föckler and I met at a Scalability unconference at the Guardian in 2010.  I was talking a lot about delivery and scaling technical team management in some of the sessions and we had a brief talk about the growth that Mendeley was going through. Fast forward to last year, and he approached me about the opening for Product leadership.

Have things changed in Mendeley since you started working here?
I’d like to think that I’ve had a good impact on the transparency of our direction and priorities since I’ve arrived.  I’ve really been pushing for radical transparency around all of our choices of what we’ll develop for users and what everyone is working on at any given week.  We’ve got much greater visibility around the planned work ahead and David Lee and the insight/analytics team have made great progress on showing how we are performing against our commitments. But the big change is how much the team has grown and the recent momentum we’ve been picking up as we start moving in sync. There’s a lot more collaboration going on and this is going to result in some great improvements to the Mendeley user experience.

What’s the best thing about coming to work at Mendeley?
I get to work with some very clever people who are extremely passionate about what they want in the product. And the food on Leather Lane.

Do you have any pets?
I’ve got a lovely old border collie named Ruby who’s been my pal for 11 years now. She’s stuck with me through some pretty big life changes and always kept me moving on some pretty ambitious outdoor pursuits.  She’s getting a little slower in the mountains, but we’ll be out for an adventure as long as we can still get out there.

What is the one website you can’t live without?
I’ve never been particularly attached to specific websites, but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t survive without the app Pocket.  I have such a steady stream of links and posts flooding my attention every day and I love being able to import them to Pocket and catch up without distraction when I’m travelling.  We’d do well, to make our mobile app fill the same role in researchers lives and I think Steve Dennis has been doing an amazing job of taming the flood of research articles for researchers on the go.

When you were growing up, what did you want to be?
I dreamt of being an astronomer for a long while and I spent many a cold winter evening steaming up my backyard telescope while staring down the jittery craters of the moon. My enthusiasm died a bit when I discovered the central role of maths in modern astronomy and the realisation that telescope time was a rare and scarce commodity. Then I fancied being a doctor until a field trip to a pathology lab full of oversized livers and sliced cadavers put me off too.  And mountaineering had a big draw to me, despite growing up in a relatively flat part of the States. But I had been in a ballet studio from the age of six, so by my teens it was becoming pretty clear to me that I had a future and calling to be onstage and I grabbed that opportunity.  Dancers really need to be in a company as an apprentice by the time they’re 17-18, so I left home at 17 to follow my dream.

If you could acquire one extra skill or talent, what would that be?
Patience.  Life is short and I’m on the third act of my second career.  But if you always rush, you miss the richness of what you have right now.

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
I’m terrible about starting many books at once and always have several things on the go:

- The Art of the Start & Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki : I love Kawasaki’s distilled and lucid approach to startup business
- Data Visualisation : I’ve been learning Processing.org to keep my programming chops up and to scratch some visualisation itches I’ve had
- Think Stats : I work with some incredibly smart people at Mendeley and its disrespectful not to understand and wield some more rigorous statistical skills
- Bandit Algorithms for website optimisation : I want to start pushing our behavioural testing here and there are some great algorithms in this text
- Insanely Simple : The Apple approach to product and development is focussed and successful. An awesome look at their approach.
-  Welsh 3000 Ft challenges: I’m under the impression that I’ll get fit enough to compete this gruelling 29 miler in Snowdonia this year.  We’ll see
- Goedel, Escher, Bach : I’m stuck a bit on this, but its a fascinating blend of art, science and philosophy

What would you change about the world if you could change one thing?
We’d stop destroying this incredible planet we live on in the pursuit of passing desire.  I spend a good deal of time on glaciers at high altitude and have seen first-hand how quickly our climate is warming.  I just can’t fathom why we’d allow this to happen, just to preserve our privilege of driving our lazy butts to go shopping.

Favourite hobby?
I code and make things whenever I get the chance and having kids is giving me great excuses to do that in spades.  My daughter and I are building robots with Lego and Arduino these days.  Go #dadops.

Favourite food/drink?
I am a bit of a sucker for Pizza.  And with Maletti so close up the road, its hard to resist.

Favourite film?
Blade Runner remains my enduring favourite.  Since becoming a father, I see less film in the cinema than I used to, but I’m getting to rediscover all the great kids films.  My daughter Bella and I love the “Old Bamboo” number from Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang.  Plus Pixar can do no wrong. (Except Cars, which was nothing but wrong.  Let’s never speak of it again.)

Three things you would put in Room 101
Plastic waste
Sticking plasters in swimming pools
People who don’t make eye contact or return a friendly “Hello” when you pass and greet them.

Now for a serious one worthy of the Mendeley vision: If you could give
unlimited funding and resources to one area of research, what would it
be and why?

I’d get everyone to stop messing about with genetic modification.  I mean, c’mon, we’re just thinking small!  Glow in the dark mice?  Pest resistant grain!  Give me a flat-chested, eight legged chicken and I’ll show you more Sunday roast than you could shake a drumstick at.

Oh, and cancer of course.

Rosario is a Senior Software Engineer and Team Lead here at Mendeley, and she’s been with us pretty much from the start, nearly 4 years! So we catch up with her to ask what it was like back then, what’s changed, and what makes her stick around!

Do you have any nicknames?
Many, but the most recent one is Rosie

Where did you work before coming to Mendeley?
Before moving to London I was working at the University of Seville for RedIRIS which is the Spanish National Technology Foundation.

What made you apply for a job at Mendeley?
The company was young with an interesting and really ambitious goal. I
always wanted to be part of something big and Mendeley seemed to have a
lot of potential.

When you started working here, were things like you expected?
To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect. I do remember being really
scared of speaking English, as at that time wasn’t very good, and I was
really quiet… That’s not really happening any more! Good times
though…

Have things changed in Mendeley since you started working here?
A lot! When I joined we were like 10-12 people if I remember correctly.
I’ve moved offices once and desks… I can’t even remember how many
times now! There’s been times I’ve arrived to the office after holidays
and not recognised half of the people there, but that’s always fun! They
look as confused as I do

What’s the best thing about coming to work at Mendeley?
The people I work with, without any doubt. I love my team! What we’re
building is amazing and is helping a lot of researchers to make this
world better! That’s what gets me out of bed every day.

Do you have any pets?
My family has 2 little cute dogs (smooth fox terriers) in Spain – I pretty much love all animals, but I have a special soft spot for sausage dogs, they’re just too cute.

Who would be invited to your perfect dinner party?
The Monty Pythons, Tchaikovsky, Chris O’Dowd, Einstein, Freddy Mercury and all the people I love! The more the merrier.

What is the one website you can’t live without?
Soundcloud and Grooveshark

When you were growing up, what did you want to be?
I changed my mind a lot actually… First, like my mum, a chemist, so I could make my own potions – then an engineer, like my dad, who I consider one of the smartest people I know. And then finally, a pianist, but it was too late for that when I had to decide!

If you could acquire one extra skill or talent, what would that be?
Being musically gifted would be amazing. I’d love if I could play the piano.

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
I tend to have a few books in the pipeline and I read them as my mood goes – reading a few techie books, a few comic books (Maus, Saga) and some others…

What was the first record you ever bought?
I think it was No Need to Argue by The Cranberries.

What music is on your iPod at the moment?
A lot. Around 300 playlists and nearly 9k tracks on my Spotify… I pretty much listen to everything, but lately what keeps me going is Pretty Lights.

Favourite video game/hobby?
My favourite video game of all time is Final Fantasy VII. My favourite hobby, without any doubt: listening to music and dancing.

Favourite food/drink?
Serrano ham, french fries, cheese / Coca Cola, a nice wine and Hendricks!

Favourite film?
Difficult to choose… I never get tired of Finding Nemo, A Clockwork Orange, Moulin Rouge or The Notebook.

Favourite place in the world?
Any sunny solitary beach does it for me, really. Maracaipe in Porto de Galinhas, Brazil would be my current favourite.

Three things you would put in Room 101
Rude/mean people, politicians, Internet trolls.

Now for a serious one worthy of the Mendeley vision: If you could give unlimited funding and resources to one area of research, what would it be and why?

Cancer. Unfortunately, I’ve had to see a lot of my loved ones dying and suffering from it.

Today we are excited to announce that Mendeley is joining Elsevier!

You might already have heard some rumors and speculation about this in the past few weeks. We hope you’ll understand that we couldn’t address the rumors head-on until there was some actual news to share with you. Now that the union is official, we would like to take some time to explain how it will benefit Mendeley’s and Elsevier’s users, the research community in general, as well as address some of the questions you may have.

The most important things first: very little will change for you as a Mendeley user. In fact, Mendeley is only going to get better for you. For starters, we are doubling everyone’s storage space at no cost. Your free Mendeley account now comes with 2GB, Mendeley Plus and MIE accounts get upgraded to 5GB, and Mendeley Pro accounts to 10GB. There will always be a free version of Mendeley, and our functionality will continue to improve, now even faster than before. We will focus on what has made Mendeley a success in the first place: ensuring that everything we do makes our users’ lives easier and listening closely to your needs. Your data will still be owned by you, we will continue to support standard and open data formats for import and export to ensure that data portability, and – as explained recently – we will invest heavily in our Open API, which will further evolve as a treasure trove of openly licensed research data. Our vision continues to be to make science more collaborative and open, and now we will work towards this vision with the support of the world’s largest science publisher.

Elsevier’s resources, partnerships, and reach in the academic, library, and professional community will enable us to accelerate our progress towards our vision. Our team will expand significantly over the next few years. Elsevier’s Scopus and ScienceDirect platforms will become seamlessly interoperable with Mendeley, creating a central discovery, workflow, and collaboration network for the global research community. Here’s Elsevier’s comments about what they expect from the partnership.

On a more personal note, let me also explain why we chose to team up with Elsevier at this point. Mendeley had just raised a significant round of funding from existing and new investors, with more investors wanting to join. Also, Mendeley’s revenues from our individual and team premium accounts, as well as our new Mendeley Institutional Edition, had tripled over the past year. We could have continued on our path independently, yet we felt that the opportunity to give our users access to better content, more data, and faster development was just too exciting to pass up.

Of course, we are aware that – especially in the past year – the academic community has criticized Elsevier for some of its policies and positions. Our own relationship with Elsevier has been conflicted at times. Elsevier is a multi-faceted company with over 7000 employees, so it is impossible to put them into a single box. We were being challenged by some parts of the organization over whether we intended to undermine journal publishers (which was never the case), while other parts of the organization were building successful working relationships with us and even helped to promote Mendeley.

For example, when Elsevier decided to shut down its social bookmarking service, the 2collab team collaborated with us to build a data import tool, then recommended their users to migrate to us, the upstart competitor. When we co-hosted (together with Nature Publishing Group and the British Library) the Science Online London Conference to talk about Open Science, Elsevier was one of our first sponsors. And when we launched our Open API, Elsevier was the first major publisher to embrace our data and build a Mendeley Readership App for their application platform.

Time and time again, Elsevier struck us as one of the most innovative and tech-savvy publishers out there. They have launched challenges to make research papers more interactive and useful, improve the process and incentives of peer review, and build knowledge discovery and visualization tools for the life sciences. They provide tools for exploring and unearthing connections between researchers and contribute to the ORCID author profile initiative. Like us, the Elsevier Labs team is researching semantics, taxonomies, natural language processing, data visualization, and big data analytics. Lastly, Elsevier’s applications platform mirrors our own ambition of enabling developers to create unique new research tools.

Elsevier is a large, complex organization – to say the least! While not all of its moves or business models have been universally embraced, it is also a hugely relevant, dynamic force in global publishing and research. More importantly, we have found that the individual team members – the employees, editors, innovators, and tool developers we’ve worked with – all share our genuine desire to advance science. This is why we’re thrilled to join Elsevier and help shape its future.

In sum, the overlap between Elsevier’s and our vision has always been remarkable. Combining Elsevier’s content, analytics tools, and long-standing publisher/society relationships with Mendeley’s collaboration platform and social data will enable both of us to develop amazing new services that will make your research life easier.

I know you’ll have a lot of questions, so please find some additional information here. If you’re still skeptical about whether this will be a good thing for you as a user, we hope to convince you by our actions over the next few weeks and months. Good things are about to happen!

Thank you for all of your support, and thanks especially to our incredible team of Mendeley Advisors!

Jan, Paul, Victor, and Team Mendeley

This time around, we have a friendly chat with our VP Finance & Operations David Lee, who’s been with us here at Mendeley for just under a year, before which he worked for the likes of EMI and Betfair.

What made you apply for a job at Mendeley?
Mendeley ticked all the criteria I was looking for in my next challenge: I wanted to help build a company with an innovative/disruptive product with huge potential. Work with real entrepreneurs and have a role with lots of responsibility and impact.

When you started working here, were things like you expected?
I knew there would be a cultural change going from a corporate to a start-up, but I was pleasantly surprised. Mendeley has a fun environment and a genuine team culture, it really feels like we are all in the same boat working together to make something great.

Have things changed in Mendeley since you started working here?
I like to think that I have brought a certain level of organisation and focus to the company. Not too much, but just enough.

What’s the best thing about coming to work at Mendeley?
The ability to get stuff done quickly and have a very real and immediate impact is highly rewarding and refreshing (compared with a larger corp organisation).

Do you have any pets? If not, what would be your ideal one?
My ideal pet would be a Dashchund that shits money.

Who would be invited to your perfect dinner party? (you may include fictional characters and dead people)
I was lucky enough recently to be invited to a dinner party with this years BAFTA winners/nominees. It would be hard to top that.

If you could acquire one extra skill or talent, what would that be?
The ability to fly

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
Steve Jobs biography – it’s taken me months to get through. I am always reading about entrepreneurs, innovation, start-ups and business strategy.

What would you change about the world if you could change one thing?
Suffering

What was the first record you ever bought?
Starship – Nothings going to stop us now.

What music is on your iPod at the moment?
I am mostly on Spotify now. I love using their app platform for music discovery.

Favourite food/drink?
I do love a tasty burger

Favourite film?
Impossible question. But Star Wars would feature somewhere close to the top.

Favourite place in the world?
Tokyo with my wife

Three things you would put in Room 101
Jan, Victor and Paul! ha ha ha ha! Only kidding, those guys rock.

Now for a serious one worthy of the Mendeley vision: If you could give
unlimited funding and resources to one area of research, what would it
be and why
Time travel.

This week we ask some questions of our bubbly Office Manager Carole, who is responsible for keeping things looking lovely and working smoothly here at Mendeley HQ. 

When you started working here, were things like you expected?
They were exactly like I imagined, really laid back and really interesting
people all passionate about the company

Have things changed in Mendeley since you started working here?
I am still working on making the office a fun place to work in and hopefully the
changes will be felt soon

What’s the best thing about coming to work at Mendeley?
Everyone is friendly and chatty (and breakfast obviously)

Do you have any pets?
I have a cat back in Madeira called Fluffy, he is all white and very fluffy. He is massive at over 7Kg and thinks he is a dog. He has one yellow eye and one blue eye. He is the best cat ever and needs attention all the time. If you don’t pay him any attention, he will come, sit on your laps and you cannot move.

What is the one website you can’t live without?
I have to say Facebook as I am following my friends from all around the world.

When you were growing up, what did you want to be?
Air hostess. I love flying.

If you could acquire one extra skill or talent, what would that be?
I would like to be a great singer

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
Sir Alan Sugar because I was curious to get to know the man more and have a better understanding of his business mind.

What would you change about the world if you could change one thing?
Now I am going to sound like a beauty pageant contestant and say world peace.

What was the first record you ever bought?
It was actually a present but my friend back in France got me Bros: ‘When will I be famous’, loved it.

What music is on your iPod at the moment?
On my MP3 player, Arabic, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and English music, oh and Turkish.

Favourite video hobby?
I love dancing.

Your greatest vice?
Smoking I guess

Favourite place in the world?
It would have to be Australia, I absolutely adored the East coast.

Three things you would put in Room 101
Spiders, thunder and onions

Now for a serious one worthy of the Mendeley vision: If you could give
unlimited funding and resources to one area of research, what would it
be and why?

Medical research to beat diseases like cancer and Climate change to make sure we have a planet if we get to live longer

This week in our series of blogs about Team Mendeley we find out a bit more about our Lead Interaction Designer/iOS Product Manager Steve Dennis. When Mendeley was looking to expand its design team 3 years ago, our founders Victor Henning and Paul Föckler  approached Steve, who had moved to the UK from New Zealand just a month before… “they found my personal site through a science-hack-day I’d registered for. I started less than a week after first meeting Victor and Paul” he recalls.

Have things changed in Mendeley since you started working here?
Yes, for the better.  Everything is a lot more structured than it was 3 years ago, which allows for better planning, and ultimately better products for our users which is what matters.  Also free breakfast on Mondays is a pretty great addition!

What’s the best thing about coming to work at Mendeley?
Interacting with our users every day is what keeps me going.  Our users are friendly and very passionate about the product.

Do you have any pets? If not, what would be your ideal one?
If I had the option, it would be a baby monkey.  Riding backwards on a pig optional, but preferred.

What is the one website you can’t live without?
Is it ok to say Mendeley.com? Cause it actually pays for all my food…  Otherwise Twitter.

When you were growing up, what did you want to be?
A rubbish collector.  Then a stunt-man.  Then a computer tech.  So I became a Designer.

If you could acquire one extra skill or talent, what would that be?
Backend programming.  It would be amazing to be able to develop small product ideas in my spare time.

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
Re-reading Indy Young’s ‘Mental Models’, because it’s always good to keep this stuff fresh.

What would you change about the world if you could change one thing?
I’d make burgers healthy enough to be eaten every day, and plentiful enough for that to be sustainable.

What was the first record you ever bought?
Garbage’s first album.

What music is on your iPod at the moment?
First ten bands via shuffle: Machine Head, Ling Tosite Sigure, Beck, Puscifer, Sikth, Klone, Deftones, Three Trapped Tigers, Devin Townsend Project, and Twelve Foot Ninja.

Favourite food/drink?
The blood of my enemies… or maybe pizza.  I’ll go with pizza.

Your greatest vice?
Coke Zero.

Favourite film?
Fight Club.

Favourite place in the world?
Bed.  Location irrelevant.

Now for a serious one worthy of the Mendeley vision: If you could give unlimited funding and resources to one area of research, what would it be?
Any area that furthers space exploration, which, to be fair, is wide enough to touch on most research areas in some way.

This week we talk to Callum (or Cally to his friends) who’s our QA Team Lead. Before landing at Mendeley he worked in publishing but in his student days he actually used to be a lifeguard. Do tell us more…

“It was probably the most boring job I’ve had, the only time I got to save anyone was when a lady got cramp during aqua aerobics – not exactly Baywatch!”

What made you apply for a job at Mendeley?
I was already working in the industry and liked how Mendeley was disrupting the marketplace

When you started working here, were things like you expected?
I expected a lot more people and processes in place – it’s a real testament to the talent and ambition of people here that we can achieve so much with so few people compared with the big players in the marketplace.

Have things changed in Mendeley since you started working here?
Kaizen is an important principle here, so things are always changing.

What’s the best thing about coming to work at Mendeley?
We get a hackday every month to experiment with new technologies and products.

Who would be invited to your perfect dinner party?
Four of my close friends and Oscar Wilde.  We would have a great laugh.

What is the one website you can’t live without?
slashdot.org  - for the pithy comments

When you were growing up, what did you want to be?
A train driver

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
For work(ish) I am reading ‘Programming Collective Intelligence’ and for pleasure I’m reading ‘Racing through the dark’, the autobiography of cyclist David Millar

What would you change about the world if you could change one thing?
Free college/university education for everyone

What was the first record you ever bought?  
Bad by Michael Jackson (on cassette)

Favourite food/drink?
Croissants dunked into coffee

Your greatest vice?
I drink far too much coffee in the afternoon

Favourite place in the world?
Saint Julienne en Beauchene (a tiny picturesque village in southern France)

Three things you would put in Room 101
Walking slowly in crowded places, crocs (the shoes), tomato ketchup

Now for a serious one worthy of the Mendeley vision: If you could give unlimited funding and resources to one area of research, what would it be and why?
I want to research decision theory in more detail.  I try to use some aspects real options pricing when prioritizing work, but learning more about the theory is something I would love to do – and actually understanding the Black-Scholes model would be nice

The latest in our series of blogs featuring the various stars of the Mendeley team talks to its HR and Operations Manager Zuzana Borozova. Everybody here at Mendeley calls her Zuz, but lately the nickname Babushka seems to have stuck. So we ask her about what it’s like working at Mendeley and some of her favourite things…

How long have you been with Mendeley for?
2 years, 3 months

Where did you work before coming to Mendeley?
I was an Intern in the Slovakian Parliament (National Chancellery) while finishing my Masters, then I decided to move to London and worked in all sort of places and roles. My last one before Mendeley was as Office Manager and HR admin at a Software company (Retail) where I got involved in HR thanks to my previous manager.

What made you apply for a job at Mendeley?
No dress code and free beers on Fridays!! Haha it was more the huge task list of the role I applied for (Office Manager and HR Admin) that I was presented with at the interview (I love to be busy).

When you started working here, were things like you expected? How?
I actually had no idea what to expect. I came from a corporate company where relationships with managers were so different from what it’s like at Mendeley. I was actually very nicely surprised by the friendly, lovely attitude of our founders, management and co-workers. Everyone is really cool and good fun to work with!

Have things changed in Mendeley since you started working here?
Oh yes, we have grown so much!! When I started it was just about 30 people, now we’re 53, unbelievable. But it’s more fun, I love it!

What’s the best thing about coming to work at Mendeley?
The jokes in the kitchen in the mornings when we’re making our breakfast and coffees/teas. And the whole atmosphere, it’s great fun

Do you have any pets?
I have a dog (black Labrador called Pluto) back at home in Slovakia, I would love to have one here in London (big breed like a Rotweiller, Ridgeback, or Mastiff) but with my crazy lifestyle the poor dog would be very lonely…

Who would be invited to your perfect dinner party?
Marilyn Manson, Ozzy Osbourne, and my parents (great fun people) and all my Czecho-Slovakian friends – if it’s a party then let’s have a crazy one!

If you could acquire one extra skill or talent, what would that be?
Singing

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
Employment law, because I have just started my CIPD. Believe it or not it’s very interesting!

What was the first record you ever bought?
Hmmm I listened to all sort of crap when I was little (Backstreet Boys- no offense) but if I am thinking about the first record I bought with my own money, it would be Marilyn Manson (Mechanical Animals, great great album)

Favourite hobby?
My number one hobby is Boxing ( I spend most of my time in the boxing gym) and cooking. According to my boyfriend who is a Chef, I am pretty good at cooking.

Favourite food/drink?
Food: pork belly with crackling or halushky (Slovakian traditional dish, a bit like gnocchi with sheep’s cheese and crispy bacon) and drink obviously Czech Pilsner (I also cannot live without coffee)

Your greatest vice?
Using f words a lot…trying to get rid of this

Favourite place in the world?
At the moment it’s the gym (lol), the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to was so far Lomnicky stit (one of the highest peaks in Slovakia- High Tatras, the view is gorgeous!)

Now for a serious one worthy of the Mendeley vision: If you could give unlimited funding and resources to one area of research, what would it be and why?
Cancer research, my best friend’s mum died of a cancer and she had to watch her dying in terrible pain, no one should see their relatives and loved ones suffering.

This week we continue to introduce you to the fantastic people that make Mendeley what it is. See Wah Cheng has been Software Engineer/Product Manager with us for almost 3 years, so a true Mendeley veteran! Before coming to us, he got interested in academic research through his work at Cancer Research UK, so we start out by asking what made him apply for the job at Mendeley?

“After 2 years at CRUK, I wanted to go back to working in a startup. The fact that Mendeley was voted the best social innovation startup at the Europas made me want to apply”

When you started working here, were things like you expected?
The office was QUIET (everyone has headphones on)! Everyone was very clever.

Have things changed in Mendeley since you started working here?
The office is much less quiet now! More clever people

What’s the best thing about coming to work at Mendeley?
Seeing my colleagues, knowing that I am making progress with a great product

Do you have any pets?
No, but I’d like to have a giant St Bernard

Who would be invited to your perfect dinner party?
Beethoven (as follows from the above!)

What is the one website you can’t live without?
currently brockleycentral.blogspot.com

If you could acquire one extra skill or talent, what would that be?
To be able to swim

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
Last one I read was 1984 by George Orwell

What would you change about the world if you could change one thing?
More respect between cyclists and drivers

What was the first record you ever bought?
Umm.. cannot remember. Manic Street Preachers perhaps?

What music is on your iPod at the moment?
Godspeed You! Black Emperor (Yes, Steve, still listening to them)

Favourite video game/hobby?
Angry Birds / climbing

Favourite food/drink?
Oreo /  Good ale

Your greatest vice?
too many…

Favourite film?
Apocalypse Now

Favourite place in the world?
Sighișoara

Three things you would put in Room 101
Crap TV, Crap Music and More crap music

If you could give unlimited funding and resources to one area of research, what would it be and why?
Renewable Energy

This week we introduce another member of the Mendeley team: Business Executive Matthew “Matty” Green. He’s a relative newbie, having been with us for 3 months now, so we thought we’d get his thoughts on coming on board while they’re still fresh!

Why did you apply for this job at Mendeley?
There aren’t many small exciting companies around in London that combine a great product with huge potential, as well as the desire to change the world (of research) for the better. What more could you ask for?

And were things like you expected once you started working here?
I’d worked in tech companies before so knew roughly what to expect, though the office atmosphere was really much better! Had to get used to table football instead of table tennis…which I’m still struggling to adapt to.

Have things changed since you started?
The company is growing really fast so even in the 3 months since I started there have been more desks (and people) around me, so I guess that’s a good thing!

Do you have any pets?
No, but I’d love a Koala, or a Hippo. Logistically, both could be problematic – for different reasons.

Who would be invited to your perfect dinner party?
Marilyn Monroe, Scarlett Johansson, Angelina Jolie, Billy Connolly & Michael Palin…

What is the one website you can’t live without?
Not strictly a website, but Spotify gets me through a lot. The boring answer would be BBC

When you were growing up, what did you want to be?
A footballer…

If you could acquire one extra skill or talent, what would that be?
Can this be fictional as well? If so, flying.

What would you change about the world if you could change one thing?
Stop anything Reality TV related ever being created… Or man’s inhumanity to others…

What was the first record you ever bought?
Ace of Base – All that she wants

What music is on your iPod at the moment?
The Tallest Man on Earth

Favourite food/drink?
Steak & red wine…

Favourite film?
Goodfellas

Favourite place in the world?
Parque Tayrona in Colombia

Three things you would put in Room 101
Minor celebrities ‘famous’ for being on a reality-TV show; George Osbourne; Crying babies on public transport

Now for a serious one worthy of the Mendeley vision: If you could give unlimited funding and resources to one area of research, what would it be and why?
Astrophysics – just seems to be so much out there that we still have absolutely no idea about…