Bill leads Public Value Research in the BBC’s Research & Development Team. In addition to this, he is a well-known tech journalist and advisor to arts and cultural organisations on matters related to digital technologies.   

Dr Bartoli is the Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Chief Executive of Northumbria Healthcare Trust. She has held an Executive position for 11+ years and has an extensive portfolio of related skills and experience, particularly in healthcare leadership. She is also the board champion for race equality and chair of the Trust's organ donation committee.

Rojin is Co-Founder and CEO of Newcastle-based tech start-up PolyBox Solutions. Her impressive mix of leadership skills and skills in big data and data analytics have been instrumental in driving the company's growth and success.

Adam Byfield has a Master's degree in Physics and Astrophysics and has spent the last twenty years working in stats and data analytics across the public sector. He currently runs NHS England’s ‘INSTANT’ project, focusing on the technical testing and assurance of healthcare AI models.

Frazer Wagg is Connected Energy’s Head of Data Services. After joining the company in 2016, Frazer now leads the data services team. Using his background in mathematics and energy engineering, he is developing big data and artificial intelligence tools to further optimise the performance of our systems.

Andrew is Senior I Engineer at SMD (Soil Machine Dynamics) and is currently leading the development of their new Horizon system, for remote controlling subsea vehicles from anywhere in the world via the cloud. He has also worked on a diverse range of R&D projects for the firm.

Dr Will Wood is a Data Scientist at Salford-based tech company Naimuri, who are on a mission to make the UK a safer place through technology and data intelligence. In addition to his work at Naimuri, Will also runs his own YouTube channel, specialising in animated mathematics tutorials.

Steven is an experienced engineer and a graduate of Newcastle University's Electrical Engineering MSc. He now works as R&D and Consultant Engineer at inter-array cable optimisation specialists Kinewell Energy, and is a specialist in their proprietary software, KLO.

Marie has worked in AkzoNobel’s Marine, Protective and Yacht Research and Development teams for 9 years, currently managing data initiatives within the department. In 2019 she began a PhD at Durham University, interfacing biosciences and computer science, exploring species modelling and computer vision for identifying marine species transported by ships.

Over the past few months, Greg has worked alongside NICD on a project to predict bead size distributions at Mitsubishi Chemical SPR. His talk will cover a brief overview of the challenge, how we worked together to utilise data modelling techniques and our findings.

Richie is Technical Director here at the National Innovation Centre for Data and is hugely interested in innovation and leadership and, above all, how the two intersect. He loves nothing more than asking how? and why? in order to identify real business need.

Colin is Chief Technology Officer at Scott Logic, a growing UK software consultancy that serves financial services and public sector clients. He is a prolific technical author, blogger and speaker on a wide range of technologies. He has a keen interest in open-source, specifically how we address the associated sustainability and security challenges, and how to keep innovation at the heart of everything.

James is a Principal Architect at Scott Logic, a growing UK software consultancy that serves financial services and public sector clients. Prior to Scott Logic, he was founder and CTO of a machine learning start-up providing behaviour analysis solutions to the pharmaceutical industry for pre-clinical drug discovery. He is interested in helping organisations of all sizes leverage AI to drive real value in their business.

Monika Sharma is a Curriculum Leader in Digital Technology at Gateshead College, with a focus on data and an interest in diversity. Monika is committed to fostering inclusivity within the industry, through Skills Bootcamps, Apprenticeships and T Levels to facilitate career transitions and promote non-traditional routes into the workplace.

Over the last few years, Colin has moved from academia to co-founding the data science consultancy Jumping Rivers. He is interested in the complete machine-learning process, from collecting data, building models and delivering insights.

With over 20 years’ experience in economic development, Estelle has attracted and led multi-million-pound high-profile programmes in the North East region aimed at supporting new and growing innovative companies. An expert in access to innovation finance, she has also supported hundreds of companies on their fundraising journeys, developing a network of over 250 investors locally and nationally and connecting with a wide range of partners. In 2018, Estelle became part of the Northern Power Women list and was hailed as one of the most influential women in the region, as well as leading the North East Women in Innovation programme. She sits on the North East LEP Innovation Board and is a Non-Executive Director at Nexus.

Oliver began his career at CPI developing novel technologies for organic thin film transistors at the electronics technology centre. Nowadays, he manages a team that enables high throughput screening and generates large data sets on behalf of clients, simultaneously leveraging digital technologies to foster innovation within the formulation sector. Prior to this, he managed the materials team, where he worked on a diverse portfolio of formulation projects and specialised in surface characterisation and chemistry.

With over a decade of working in the Education sector, Hannah Marshall has a wealth of experience leading national Digital Transformation Projects. At both LCG, and in her previous employment, Hannah has been pivotal in driving forward two large scale Data Transformation Projects, bringing together many disparate data sources and providing a reporting solution that allows users to have easy access to meaningful and insightful reporting. 

Rhian is a statistician and data scientist with a specialism in developing and supporting statistical software. She has been programming in R for 15 years and is a leading educator and consultant.