Invited Speakers

George Gettinby is Professor of Statistics and Modelling Science in the University of Strathclyde. He obtained his first degree from Queens' University Belfast, followed by a PhD from the University of Ulster. He has worked for many years in diverse areas of Statistics, Mathematical Modelling and Epidemiology of Animal and Human diseases. A recent achievement is the award of Intervet's Dieter Lütticken Award for the application of statistical and epidemiological methods to sea-lice treatments in salmon farming in order to minimise the number of animals required in test groups. He has also carried out statistical analysis as part of a large European trial aimed at preventing blindness from infections at the time of Cataract and Refractive Surgery.

Paul Harper holds the position of WIMCS (Wales Institute of Mathematics and Computational Studies) Research Chair in Operational Research, and is based in the OR group, School of Mathematics Cardiff University. He is Director of hmc2 (Health Modelling Centre Cymru) which brings together Welsh researches from across the mathematical sciences and computational modelling spectrum working in the field of health modelling. His contribution to research in healthcare modelling has been reflected by major grant income with a variety of funding sources and in 2006 he was awarded the Goodeve Medal from the UK OR Society for his co-authored paper in the Journal of the OR Society (modelling targeted screening strategies for Chlamydia). During the last four years he has been invited to guest edit six special issues for various international journals. In 2008 he was co-chair of OR50, the Golden Anniversary conference of the UK OR Society and in 2011 will Chair the 37th annual conference of ORAHS (OR Applied to Health Services) to be held in Cardiff, Wales. He has worked with a number of healthcare organisations on a range of modelling topics.

Rachel Linney graduated from NUI Maynooth in 1988 with BSc Hons in Mathematics and Physics and was awarded a BSC Hons in Psychology from the Open University in 2003. In 2007 she completed a PGDE in ICT in Education at the University of Ulster. She taught mathematics and science at second level before taking up a full time secondment as an Education Officer with the NCCA in 2008 working on Project Maths.

Fionn Murtagh is Director of Information, Communications and Emergent Technologies at Science Foundation Ireland. He holds BA and BAI degrees in mathematics and engineering science, and an MSc in computer science, all from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, a PhD in mathematical statistics from UniversitŽ P. & M. Curie, Paris VI, France, and an Habilitation from UniversitŽ L. Pasteur, Strasbourg, France. He also holds the position of Professor of Computer Science in the University of London at Royal Holloway. With his latest book to be published by CUP in May 2010, he has published 6 books, 120 journal papers, and many other edited volumes, and contributions to topical volumes and conference proceedings. He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition, and a Fellow of the British Computer Society.