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Abstract:

It's a talk of two halves! A crash course in football and tennis forecasting

In recent years, statistical modelling has played an increasingly important role in the sports industry - from player evaluation systems and tactical decision tools used by team managers (as popularised by films such as Moneyball) to predictive models deployed by bookmakers and gamblers to forecast future results. In this talk I will demonstrate that simple statistical methods - combined with a healthy dose of pragmatism - can generate surprisingly powerful models for predicting sports outcomes.

Abstract:

In this talk Dr Heather Tewkesbury will describe how the Smith Institute puts maths to work across a variety of industry sectors and its vision for industry and government to embrace the mathematical sciences as a way to innovate. She will describe her career path and motivations, and give some examples of the exciting ways in which mathematics is being used by the Smith Institute and its collaborators to solve real business problems, from chocolate manufacture to multi-billion pound spectrum auctions.

Abstract:

Biomedical engineering is a discipline that advances knowledge in mathematics, biology and medicine, where specialists in this field apply engineering principles and methods to medical problems. However, the role that biomedical engineers can have to further biomedical research is often under-represented in healthcare. The presentation will demonstrate how modelling techniques such as state-space (including compartmental) modelling can be used to describe a wide range of biological scenarios. The need for highly effective collaboration with mathematicians, biologists, chemists and physicians will be described, where ‘real’ data are generated to validate the mathematical models, and then predictions from models are tested in the laboratory and clinic. The presentation will focus on real-life examples in the pharmaceutical industry where biomedical engineers’ and applied mathematicians’ role is necessary within the drug discovery and development phases.

About the Speaker:

Dr Mohammed Atari, CEng, CSci, received his B.Sc. degree in biomedical engineering from JUST (Jordan). He obtained his M.Sc. degree in advanced biomedical engineering, and his Ph.D. degree in biomedical systems modelling from the University of Warwick. He is currently working as a Mathematical Modeller at Cyprotex Discovery Ltd., a preclinical discovery and development company, on developing novel in silico models for drug pharmacokinetics to improve the predictive power of Cyprotex software.