Alex Wixon was singled out for praise at his Staffordshire University graduation ceremony with University Chancellor Lord Stafford talking about his resilience and determination in his opening speech.

Alex was awarded a First Class Bachelor of Science with Honours in Digital and Technology Solutions following the completion of his Professional Apprenticeship (Integrated Degree) at Staffordshire University. He has been praised by course tutors and his employers, Stone-based technology firm Capula.

Now Alex, who joined Capula in 2018, has been nominated in the Apprentice of the Year category of the Staffordshire University Business Awards.

Dr Mohammad Hasan, one of Alex’s lecturers at Staffordshire University, said: “I am very happy that Alex is being nominated for the apprentice of the year award by Capula and heartily support this.

“I have been supervising Alex and have found him very sincere, self-motivated, active and eager to learn. His current progress in his apprenticeship project is outstanding. I wish him all the success in his life.”

Alex has consistently achieved grades over and above even his own aspirations, regardless of the subject matter.

On many occasions Alex has tied his academic progress to practical projects being run by his department at Capula, such as improvements to wireless systems and core networks, which has benefitted both the business and his academic studies.

Working within the IT department, Alex has led on multiple high-risk projects and developed solutions that provide great value for his employer.

Members of his team say Alex is a pleasure to work with and is highly respected within Capula, positively engaging and continually supporting his colleagues.
Alex has been universally praised by the business as consistently being an excellent engineer whose skills, particularly regarding server administration and networking, are far above that expected of someone so early on in their career.

He constantly goes above and beyond to resolve highly technical issues and is respected by all his peers, both in the department and the wider engineering delivery teams.

During Alex’s final year project he identified weaknesses in Capula’s current core networking infrastructure and was not only able to completely redesign the entire corporate system to be far more resilient, but also dramatically improving the management and security of the devices. This greatly increased the entire systems speed and has gone further by finding ways to reutilise existing equipment which has kept costs far lower than was ever expected. This solution is of huge value to the organisation and exemplifies just how valuable Alex is to the business. Normally such a project would have been given to a senior engineer.