Date: Thursday 22 March 2012
Location: Mary Ward House, London
Mathematics 2012 is the seventh in the series of annual IMA conferences to promote mathematics. This series aims to demonstrate to both mathematicians and non mathematicians the many uses of modern mathematics. The work of the speakers this year includes the food industry, defence, finance and government. Also included are current topics in mathematics such as the promotion of mathematics to a wider audience and the interface between school and university mathematics.
We hope that the audience will have mathematicians, those who work with mathematicians in policy forming roles, and anyone who has an interest in developments in the applications of mathematics.
Confirmed Speakers
James Moffat – The Impact of Mathematics on Defence Policy
Daniel Clarke – Ending poverty: how actuarial mathematics can help.
József Baranyi – Mathematical modelling in food science and industry
David Youdan – HESTEM Programme
David Acheson – What’s the problem with Maths?
Peter Benton – The Future of the Census
Chris Linton – Surface Waves
Robert Mackay – IMA in 2012: Strategy
Speaker Biographies
Professor James Moffat FORS, CMath FIMA, FRAeS
Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl)
I started my journey in mathematics by obtaining a first class honours degree in maths and the award of the Napier Medal from Edinburgh University. Following that I completed a Carnegie Scholarship and PhD in theoretical quantum mechanics. At that point I decided that I wanted to apply my learning for the public good and joined the Ministry of Defence. I am now a Senior Fellow in the Defence Science and Technology Lab (Dstl), equivalent to Dstl Executive Board level, and in my career I have worked on a broad range of Defence applications of mathematics, operational analysis and systems engineering. This has spanned the range from aircraft technology research to supporting high level policy decisions by Government Ministers. I have published widely in peer reviewed journals and published a number of books.
Daniel Clarke
University of Oxford
Dr Daniel Clarke is an actuary and development economist who designs insurance for people on low incomes. He works at the University of Oxford, as a Departmental Lecturer in Actuarial Science at the Department of Statistics and a research associate at the Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE). He also works with the World Bank’s Insurance For The Poor Unit and Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery and the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Markets, Trade and Institutions Division. He has worked on agricultural and catastrophe insurance in India, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Mexico, Peru, Indonesia, the Caribbean region and the Pacific region and was one of the architects of the actuarial design and ratemaking methodology for the Government of India’s Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme.
Daniel has a first class degree from Cambridge University in Mathematics in Computer Science and a D.Phil. in Economics from the University of Oxford, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.
Daniel’s webpage: http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~clarke/
Dr József Baranyi
Institute of Food Research, Norwich, UK
Dr József Baranyi is the Research Leader of the Computational Microbiology Group of the Institute of Food Research, Norwich, UK, where he has been working since 1990, when he moved to the UK from Hungary.
J. Baranyi’s research focuses on the mathematical modelling of microbial responses to food environments. He has given >30 invited and keynote presentations on international conferences, coordinated major EU, BBSRC and industrial projects, been editorial board member of Applied and Environmental Microbiology since 1998, and was the statistical advisor of the Journal of Applied Microbiology between 1996 and 2010. He is an invited member and working group leader of the “Climate change and food security” Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Since his first paper 20 years ago, the total citation index of his ca 60 peer-reviewed publications exceeded 2500, making him one of the most cited authors in the area of mathematical modelling in food microbiology. His growth model (Baranyi and Roberts, 1993) is commonly referred to as “Baranyi model” in the literature.
Dr David Acheson AFIMA
Jesus College, Oxford
David Acheson is an Emeritus Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. He graduated in 1967 from King’s College, London and then obtained a Ph.D. at the University of East Anglia. His early research was on geophysical and astrophysical fluid dynamics. In 1992 he discovered a strange, gravity-defying ‘upside-down pendulums theorem’, which eventually featured on the BBC programme ‘Tomorrow’s World’. He now writes and lectures widely on mathematics, and was President of the Mathematical Association for 2010-11. His latest book 1089 and All That is a major new attempt at bringing some of the ideas and pleasures of real mathematics to the general public.
Pete Benton
Office for National Statistics
Pete is Director of the Beyond 2011 Programme in the Office for National Statistics, leading research considering the future of the Census. He joined ONS in 2002 to lead evaluation of the 2001 Census and start planning for 2011, and later became Deputy Director of the 2011 Census Programme. During this time Pete had responsibility for the design of the 2011 Census Operation, the statistical methods and systems for producing the final census outputs, development of the census address register, and the programme management. During the Census field operation, Pete took a lead role in the media campaign, conducting many national and local television and radio interviews. Once the 2011 Census field operation was complete, he moved to the Beyond 2011 Programme, once again considering how best to provide population and small area socio-demographic statistics in the future.
Prior to joining ONS, Pete was responsible for the development of patient classifications used in NHS resource allocation, and development of methods and tools for analysis of hospital activity and performance.
He has a degree in Maths and an MSc in Operational Research from the University of Southampton, and is married with three children and two step-children.
Professor Chris Linton FIMA
Loughborough University
Chris Linton is a Professor of Applied Mathematics and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Loughborough University. His research focuses on mathematical aspects of wave diffraction theory, with applications in acoustics, water waves, elasticity, electromagnetism and quantum mechanics.
