Speakers

Bill leads Public Value Research in BBC R&D. He is also a well-known tech journalist and advisor to arts and cultural organisations on digital. From 2001 to 2023 he was the regular studio expert on the BBC World Service technology programme Digital Planet and he often still appears on air as an independent commentator.

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.

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.

Barry is Director of Strategy here at the National Innovation Centre for Data. He has deep experience of business and innovation in the technology sector, having previously worked as Financial and Operations Director for Arjuna Technologies, a software company spun out of Newcastle University. In helping to shape the Data Innovation Bootcamps that the National Innovation Centre for Data runs for Newcastle University students, Barry has picked up a thing or two about how to get relevant skills into organisations.

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

Dr Ashmita Randhawa is an engineer turned social scientist. She is currently Head of Innovation at Digital Catapult North East Tees Valley, based at Sunderland Software City, and is also an Honorary Fellow at the SKOPE Research Centre, Department of Education, University of Oxford. She is passionate about supporting non-tech companies across various sectors with their adoption of data and digital technologies.

Sunderland’s Smart City ambition is to be well-connected, digitally enabled with world class infrastructure supporting inclusive services for the prosperity of the city and those who live, work and play in Sunderland. Motivated by responsible innovation, our smart city will unlock new education opportunities, employment and economic prosperity for Sunderland and the wider region.

Jacek (yat-sek)’s background is in scalable computing, and he has broad knowledge of workflows, application deployment, recomputation, and programming. He combines his role as a Senior Data Scientist here at the National Innovation Centre for Data with academic research at Newcastle University.

Peter is our Edge Solution Specialist here at the National Innovation Centre for Data, and he possesses a wealth of knowledge and experience in edge computing and IoT. His specific expertise has been instrumental in being able to support everything from charities to university spinouts with cutting-edge tools and techniques.

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.

Graham is a Lecturer in Enterprise in Newcastle University's SAgE Faculty, with a focus on widening participation in all things data as well as approaches to data capability and capacity building within organisations.

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, for which 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.

Antonia’s technical background combines computer science and statistics, and in her role here at the National Innovation Centre for Data she leverages her experience in these areas to support a wide variety of organisations from small start-ups to large public sector bodies.

Fergus studied at Newcastle University’s School of Engineering and has a background in environmental modelling. Here at the National Innovation Centre for Data, he has helped scores of organisations to improve their efficiency around data through automating reports, building dashboards, and streamlining processes.

Jacek (yat-sek)’s background is in scalable computing, and he has broad knowledge of workflows, application deployment, recomputation, and programming. He combines his role as a Senior Data Scientist here at the National Innovation Centre for Data with academic research at Newcastle University.

Mac comes from a maths and stats background and has extensive experience in Bayesian inference, time series forecasting, meta-analysis, and modelling biological systems. Recently, his interests have moved more towards AI, and he is particularly knowledgeable about large language models – even delivering the keynote talk at our Perspectives on Generative AI event in June this year.

Louise’s technical background is in exploratory data analysis and data visualisation, and she is likewise looked to as something of a data visualisation expert within the team. She has also led on conceptualising explainer animations for various parts of the National Innovation Centre for Data’s offer.

Matt is a Senior Data Scientist here at the National Innovation Centre for Data and, given that his background is in statistics and machine learning, it makes sense that he would run a workshop comparing the two disciplines. Matt’s broad expertise means he is able to support organisations of all kinds and all sizes with various data problems.

Peter is our Edge Solution Specialist here at the National Innovation Centre for Data, and he possesses a wealth of knowledge and experience in edge computing and IoT. His specific expertise has been instrumental in being able to support everything from charities to university spinouts with cutting-edge tools and techniques.

Stephen has worked across a variety of sectors including international airlines and local authority town planning, and he is now a Senior Data Scientist here at the National Innovation Centre for Data. He has significant technical and practical experience, particularly across data engineering and cloud computing.