Data analytics: the skills need in STEM

Sir John Skehel FMedSci FRS, Vice-President and Biological Secretary, The Royal Society

John Skehel has provided major insights into the molecular basis of how viruses recognise and infect their host cells. John focusses on the virus that causes influenza, of which there are 3–5 million cases a year worldwide, resulting in up to 500,000 deaths. 

To infect a cell, the influenza virus must bind to a sialic acid-containing receptor on the cell surface, which it achieves through its own haemagglutinin glycoprotein. John was able to isolate, crystallise and subsequently determine the three-dimensional structure of this molecule. He also observed that under conditions of low pH, haemagglutinin changes shape — allowing the virus to fuse with and enter the cell.

John has been a leader in virology research for over thirty years. He headed the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza between 1975 and 1993 and was the Director of the National Institute for Medical Research from 1987–2006. His pioneering research was recognised in 1996 when he received a knighthood.

Sir Mark Walport

Sir Mark is the Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government and Head of the Government Office for Science.

Previously, Sir Mark was Director of the Wellcome Trust, which is a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health by supporting the brightest minds.   Before joining the Trust he was Professor of Medicine and Head of the Division of Medicine at Imperial College London.

He is Co-Chair of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology and has been a member of this since 2004.   He has also been a member of the India UK CEO Forum, the UK India Round Table and the advisory board of Infrastructure UK and a non-executive member of the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research.  He is a member of a number of international advisory bodies.

He has undertaken independent reviews for the UK Government on the use and sharing of personal information in the public and private sectors:  ‘Data Sharing Review’ (2009); and secondary education:  ‘Science and Mathematics: Secondary Education for the 21st Century’ (2010).

He received a knighthood in the 2009 New Year Honours List for services to medical research and was elected as Fellow of The Royal Society in 2011.

Dr Ralf Herbrich, Managing Director of Amazon Development Center Germany GmbH

Since November 2012, Dr. Herbrich works at Amazon as Director of Machine Learning Science; until August 2013 he worked in Seattle and then in Berlin, Germany.  Dr. Herbrich's team works in the area of Forecasting, Content Linkage, Scalable Machine Learning Services and Vision-Assisted Technologies.

From October 2011 to November 2012, Dr. Herbrich worked at Facebook in Palo Alto & Menlo Park leading the Unified Ranking and Allocation team. This team is focused on building horizontal large-scale machine learning infrastructure for learning user-action-rate predictors that enabled unified value experiences across the products.

From 2009 to 2011, Dr. Herbrich was Director of Microsoft’s Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Lab UK demonstrating and enabling new social experiences through development of computational intelligence technologies on large online data collections. From 2006 – 2009, together with Thore Graepel, Dr. Herbrich was leading the Applied Games and the Online Services and Advertising (OSA) research group, which engaged in research at the intersection of machine learning and computer games as well as research in search and online advertising combining insights from machine learning, information retrieval, game theory, artificial intelligence and social network analysis. Dr. Herbrich joined Microsoft Research in 2000 as a Postdoctoral researcher and Research Fellow of the Darwin College Cambridge.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Dr. Herbrich worked at the Technical University Berlin as a teaching assistant where he obtained both a diploma degree in Computer Science and a Ph.D. degree in Statistics. Research interests of Dr. Herbrich include Bayesian inference and decision making, computer games, kernel methods and statistical learning theory. Dr. Herbrich is one of the inventors of the Drivatars™ system in the Forza Motorsport series as well as the TrueSkill™ ranking and matchmaking system in Xbox 360 Live. Dr. Herbrich also co-invented the adPredictor click-prediction technology used today in Bing’s online advertising system.

Dr Caroline Hargrove, Technical Director, McLaren Applied Technologies

Caroline is a founding member of McLaren Applied Technologies (part of the McLaren Technologies Group) set up to exploit McLaren technology and expertise to new markets. She has worked in a range of sectors from motorsports to health, elite sports and energy. Caroline obtained a PhD in Engineering from Cambridge. After lecturing for 4 years at Cambridge, she joined the McLaren F1 team. For 10 years, she worked in vehicle dynamic simulations and on the development of the F1 simulator.  In 2007, she joined McLaren Applied Technologies, where she is now the Technical Director.  In 2015, she was also appointed Visiting Professor in surgical simulations at the University of Oxford.

Professor Gil McVean FRS, Director of the Big Data Institute, Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery, The University of Oxford

Gil McVean uses mathematical, statistical and computational approaches to learn about fundamental biological and evolutionary processes, particularly recombination, mutation and natural selection, through the study of genetic variation in natural populations. He developed the first statistical method for estimating fine-scale patterns of recombination rate variation from genome-scale genetic variation data.  Application of this method led to the first fine-scale genetic map in humans, helped identify the hotspot-positioning gene PRDM9, and has led to discoveries about how recombination evolves.

He has also played leading roles in efforts to map patterns of genetic variation in humans through the International HapMap Project and the 1000 Genomes Project, made important contributions to theoretical population genetics and the study of mutation and developed an influential statistical method for imputing classical HLA alleles from SNP data.  His work on coloured de Bruijn graphs and graph genomes is helping to make possible the study of highly diverse species and genomic regions.

Gil’s work has been recognised through awards including the 2010 Francis Crick Medal and Lecture and the 2012 Weldon Memorial Prize.

Dr Ling Ge, Fellow, Data Science Institute, Imperial College

After carrying out ground breaking research in quantum computing, nanotechnology and batteries at Oxford University and Imperial College, Dr Ling Ge is an award-winning scientist, Fellow of Data Science Institute and Executive Officer to the Vice President (Innovation) at Imperial College London. Previously she managed the EPSRC UK National Service for Computational Chemistry Software (NSCCS) and oversaw all aspects of the national service with a vision to ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of computational research globally. 

Ling completed her doctorate in modelling carbon nanomaterials – carbon nanotubes, fullerenes and graphene – for quantum computing at Oxford University. Following that she was a Leverhulme Fellow at Imperial. She is a Clarendon Scholar of Oxford University, Senior Member and Dormus Scholar at St. Anne’s College, Oxford. She wrote for the Financial Times and Wired Magazine, promoting science, innovations, public health and policy across the globe.

Alex Healing, Chief Researcher, BT

Alex Healing is Chief Researcher of Visual Analytics at BT where he leads a multi-disciplinary team of researchers and developers who create web-based visual analytic systems for a wide range of applications including large-scale network security. He architected the award-winning Assure Analytics capability and regularly works to bridge the gap between research theory and business operations. He has published in several conferences and journals, is co-author of nine patent applications and has won several awards. He holds a joint honours degree in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh.

Adrian Mardell, Transformation Director, Jaguar Land Rover

Adrian Mardell is the Deputy Chief Financial Officer and Operations Controller for Jaguar Land Rover globally. His 25 years automotive experience has included a number of diverse assignments most notably the acquisition and disposal of multi billion Pound businesses. In his current role he has financial control of £20 billion cost per annum and is responsible for all major product and non product capital investment decisions both inside the UK and globally. Most recently his work has involved intensive negotiations with governments located in different parts of the World, negotiating with very different cultures, to enable the ongoing expansion of the Jaguar Land Rover business.