Jack Buckingham
Summary
I am a PhD student studying Bayesian optimisation, supervised by Professor Juergen Branke (WBS) and Professor Ivo Couckuyt (Ghent University; imec). I am currently working on a form of robust optimisation called ‘active robustness’.
While my focus is on designing new Bayesian optimisation algorithms, I am particularly interested in problems motivated by “green” applications. That is, things which solve some of the problems created by climate change and more generally by human impact on the environment.
My Research
Bayesian optimisation is a technique for maximising an expensive, unknown function using only a small number of evaluations. For example, consider optimising the parameters of a simulation which takes minutes/hours to run or tuning the hyper-parameters of a neural network which must be retrained to test each new set.
An orthogonal concern in engineering design is that of robustness. Designs often need to perform well in a variety of environmental conditions and must not be over-specialised to any one target environment. Active robustness refers to the bi-level optimisation problem of designing a robust product which has some capacity to adapt to its environment in real time. My research combines these two themes.
Publications & Preprints
Education and Experience
2022-present: PhD in Bayesian optimisation, University of Warwick
Working title: Designing actively robust products with Bayesian optimisation
2023 (June-August): Technical Mentor, Data Science for Social Good UK
Technical mentor to two teams of four fellows working on three-month data science projects
Oversaw the teams' data science strategies and provided guidance on software best practices.
2021-2022: MSc in the Mathematics of Real World Systems, University of Warwick (Distinction)
My MSc project was in multi-objective Bayesian optimisation.
2017-2021: Data Engineer/Data Scientist, Pace Revenue
Early member at a dynamic pricing start-up in the hospitality industry.
I worked as both a data engineer and data scientist. Selected projects include using SARIMA models to forecast hotel bookings, and incorporating booking forecasts in the pricing algorithm.
2015-2017: Metrology Engineer, Renishaw
Precision measurement company for the manufacturing industry.
Prototyping new calibration methods; Quantification and propagation of uncertainty; Non-linear optimisation; Bayesian modelling.
2011-2015: Master of Mathematics (BA/MMath), University of Cambridge (Merit)
Contact
jack dot buckingham at warwick dot ac dot uk
Office: D2.11 (zeeman)
SIAM-IMA
This year I am president of the Warwick SIAM-IMA chapter. We run the SPAAM seminar series, as well as organising social events, hackathons and the AMP conference.
If you are a Warwick student with an idea, then send me an email and we'll make it happen!
If you are from a SIAM chapter at another university looking to collaborate then you can contact us at siam at warwick dot ac dot uk
We're very friendly!
Useful Links
Climate change