Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 April 2008
Organised by Dr Ned Garnett, Professor Charles Godfray FRS and Professor Robert Gurney
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Professor Jeff Dozier (Chair)
Jeff Dozier is a professor in the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he has taught since 1974 after earning his PhD from the University of Michigan. He founded the Bren School and served as its first dean for 6 years. His research interests are in the fields of snow hydrology, Earth system science, remote sensing, and information systems. He has pioneered interdisciplinary studies in two areas: one involves the hydrology, hydrochemistry, and remote sensing of mountainous drainage basins; the other is in the integration of environmental science and remote sensing with computer science and technology. He was the senior project scientist for NASA's Earth Observing System when the configuration for the system was established, and he helped found the MEDEA group, which investigated the use of classified data for environmental research and monitoring. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an Honorary Professor of the Academia Sinica, and a recipient of the NASA/Department of Interior William T. Pecora Award and the NASA Public Service Medal.
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Dr Kelvin Droegemeier (Speaker)
Kelvin K. Droegemeier earned a B.S. with Special Distinction in Meteorology in 1980 from the University of Oklahoma, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in atmospheric science in 1982 and 1985, respectively, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined the University of Oklahoma in September, 1985 and in 1989 co-founded the NSF Science and Technology Center (STC) for Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS) and served as its director from 1994 until 2006. In 2003, Dr. Droegemeier co-founded the NSF Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), serving as its deputy director, and also directs the NSF Large ITR grant titled Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD). In 2004, Dr. Droegemeier was appointed by President George W. Bush, and confirmed by the Senate, for a 6-year term on the National Science Board, which is the governing body of the National Science Foundation that also provides science policy guidance to the Congress and President.
Dr. Droegemeier's research interests lie in thunderstorm dynamics and predictability, variational data assimilation, mesoscale dynamics, computational fluid dynamics, massively parallel computing, and aviation weather. He is past Chairman of the UCAR Board of Trustees and has authored and co-authored over 60 refereed journal articles and over 200 conference publications. In 1997, Dr. Droegemeier received the Discover Magazine Award for Technology Innovation (computer software category), and also in 1997 CAPS was awarded the Computerworld Smithsonian Award (science category). Droegemeier also is a recipient of the NSF Pioneer Award and the Federal Aviation Administration's Excellence in Aviation Award. He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.
Professor Charles Godfray FRS (Organiser)
I am Hope Professor in the Zoology Department at Oxford University; I moved there in 2006 after spending 20 years at Imperial College where I was latterly Director of the NERC Centre for Population Biology and Head of the Biology Division.
I am interested in population and evolutionary biology. My lab makes extensive use of the pea aphid as a model system to explore a variety of different problems in ecology and evolution. We also work on modelling the population biology of insects that vector human diseases, and how they may be controlled using modern genetic interventions. I am very interested in the application of the web and associated e-science technologies to biodiversity informatics and particularly taxonomy and systematics.
Professor Wendy Hall CBE (Speaker)
Wendy Hall is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and was Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) 2002-2007. She was the founding Head of the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia (IAM) Research Group in ECS.
She has published over 350 papers in areas such as hypermedia, multimedia, digital libraries, and Web technologies.
She is currently senior Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Vice President of the ACM and is a Past President of the British Computer Society (2003-2004). She is a member of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, a member of the Executive Committee of UKCRC, and Chair of the newly formed BCS Women's Forum. She is the Chair of the Advisory Board of the new Company, Garlik Limited, and is a founding member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council.
She was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday honours list in 2000, and became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the same year.
She was recently awarded the 2006 Anita Borg Award for Technical Leadership.
Professor Tony Hey (Chair)
As corporate vice president for technical computing, Tony Hey coordinates efforts across Microsoft Corp. to collaborate with the global scientific community. He is a well-known researcher in the field of parallel computing, and his experience in applying computing technologies to scientific research helps Microsoft work with researchers worldwide in various fields of science and engineering.
Before joining Microsoft, Hey worked as head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, where he helped build the department into one of the top five computer science research institutions in England. Since 2001, Hey has served as director of the United Kingdom's e-Science Initiative, managing the government's efforts to provide scientists and researchers with access to key computing technologies.
Hey is a fellow of the U.K.'s Royal Academy of Engineering and has been a member of the European Union's Information Society Technology Advisory Group. He also has served on several national committees in the U.K., including committees of the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry and the Office of Science and Technology. Hey received the award of Commander of the Order of the British Empire honor for services to science in the 2005 U.K. New Year's Honours List.
Hey is a graduate of Oxford University, with both an undergraduate degree in physics and a doctorate in theoretical physics.
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Professor Alan Thorpe (Chair)
Alan graduated from the University of Warwick with a physics degree in 1973 and from Imperial College with a doctorate in atmospheric physics in 1976. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College for five years and after a short interval at the Met Office took up a lectureship in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading in 1982. He became a professor of meteorology in 1991 and head of department in 1996.
His research involves the basic dynamics and predictability of weather and climate. From 1999 to 2001, Alan was Director of the Met Office's Hadley Centre for climate prediction and research.
In 2001 he became the first director of the newly-established NERC Centres for Atmospheric Science, which is a distributed NERC Collaborative Centre involving over 15 universities. He became Chief Executive of NERC in April 2005.
He has been Vice-President of the Royal Meteorological Society and was awarded their L F Richardson Prize (1979) and Buchan Prize (1992) for his research. He was a founding co-chair of the World Meteorological Organisation's research programme "THORPEX: A World Weather Research Programme". He is an assessor on the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs's (Defra) Science Advisory Council and a member of a number of national and international science committees. Professor Thorpe is visiting professor at the University of Reading.
Professor Warren Washington (Speaker)
Warren M. Washington is a senior scientist and head of the Climate Change Research Section in the Climate and Global Dynamics Division at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
Born in Portland, Oregon, Washington earned a bachelor's degree in physics and a master's degree in meteorology from Oregon State University. After completing his doctorate in meteorology at Pennsylvania State University, he joined NCAR in 1963 as a research scientist. Washington's areas of expertise are atmospheric science and climate research, and he specializes in computer modelling of the earth's climate. He has published more than 100 papers in professional journals. His book An Introduction to Three-Dimensional Climate Modelling, co-authored with Claire Parkinson (NASA), is a reference on climate modelling. The second edition was published in May, 2005.
Washington is consultant and advisor to a number of government officials and committees on climate system modelling. From 1978 to 1984, he served on the President's National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere. He participated in several panels of the National Research Council and chaired its Advisory Panel for Climate Puzzle, a film produced for the 1986 PBS television series Planet Earth. Washington was a member of the Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board from 1990 to 1993 and has been on the Secretary of Energy's Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee (BERAC) since 1990. From 1996-2006, he served as the chair of the subcommittee on Global Change for BERAC.