The MARS Strategic Oversight Group (SOG) has membership drawn from the international applied mathematics and AI communities alongside key industrial stakeholders. The SOG plays a vital role in helping to shape the strategic direction of MARS bringing a valuable and diverse range of perspectives to inform our research and curriculum development.
A recognised leader in government analytics, Professor Veronica Bowman bridges complex modelling, policy insight, and operational decision advantage. She is a statistician and data scientist specialising in Bayesian inference and uncertainty, and their application to strategic decision‑making.
Veronica is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and was awarded the 2021 Innovation and Creativity Award at the Women in Defence UK Awards. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for her work on model combination during the Covid‑19 pandemic.
She spent much of her career at Dstl, delivering real‑world impact from mathematical research, and now works as a Principal Consultant at Frazer Nash.
Veronica was appointed to the inaugural cohort of Fellows of the Academy for the Mathematical Sciences and is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham.
Julia Gog is Professor of Mathematical Biology at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, and the David N. Moore Fellow and Director of Studies in Mathematics at Queens' College, Cambridge. Julia is co-lead of the JUNIPER consortium.
Julia is a specialist in modelling the spread and evolution of infectious diseases, particularly influenza and Covid-19. In 2020 Julia was awarded the Royal Society’s Rosalind Franklin prize, honorary membership of the Mathematical Association and an OBE for services to academia and the Covid-19 response.
Find out more about Julia here.
Dr Marcella M. Gomez is an Associate Professor at UC Santa Cruz in the department of Applied Mathematics and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Baskin Engineering. She received her PhD from Caltech in 2015 and a B.S. from UC Berkeley in 2009; both degrees in Mechanical Engineering. Her research interests are in the broad field of bio-control leveraging methods in machine learning and control theory. Applications range from controlling single-cell response to driving complex systems such as wound healing.
Find out more about Marcella here.
Professor Peter Jimack joined the University of Leeds in 1990 as a Lecturer in Mathematical Software and has undertaken a wide range of roles since then, including School Director of Research, Faculty Pro-Dean for Research, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering (2010-2019) and interim DVC for Student Education (2020-2021). He has supervised more than 30 graduating PhD students and received research funding from a wide range of sources including EPSRC, industry, EU and charities.
Peter's general research area is Scientific Computation. He is particularly interested in the design, analysis, implementation and application of numerical algorithms for the reliable and efficient computational solution of partial differential equations (PDEs).
Find more about Peter here.
Dr Dave Ogle joined the UK nuclear industry in 1999 having completed a PhD in Mathematics. His initial roles were in Structural Engineering and later in Safety Case Leadership.
Dave has supported both the UK nuclear generating fleet and the Hinkley Point C new build project where he was a founding member of the Design Authority and the UK Director of Sofinel.
Dave is currently Head of Technical Strategic Programmes with EDF UK. His role within EDF UK makes him responsible for determining the lifetime of the UK’s Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor (AGR) fleet, leading the Security Programme for the UK’s generating reactors and managing critical and strategic safety case programmes.
Dr Alex Townsend is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Cornell University, working on numerical analysis, scientific computing, and machine learning. His research focuses on the development of efficient algorithms for high-dimensional problems, with particular emphasis on spectral methods, low-rank approximation, and operator learning.
He is the recipient of several awards, including the Leslie Fox Prize in Numerical Analysis, the SIAM Activity Group on Linear Algebra Prize, the SIAM Activity Group on Computational Science and Engineering Prize, SIAM SIGEST, a Simons Fellowship in Mathematics, and Cornell University’s Stephen H. Weiss Fellowship for excellence in teaching.
Find out more about Alex here.
Professor Tim Watson is the Director of the Cyber Institute at Loughborough University and the Director of Defence and Security at The Alan Turing Institute. With more than thirty years' experience working with government, industry and in academia, he has been involved with a wide range of programmes, several high-profile projects and has acted as a consultant for some of the largest telecoms, power and transport companies. He is an adviser to various parts of the UK government and to several professional and standards bodies.
Tim's research combines AI and cyber security and includes GCHQ-funded projects building AI-based synthetic environments and user simulators; FCDO research on smart cities, vehicles and anomaly detection; EU-funded projects on detecting and combating cyber crime; UK MoD research on automated defence; identifying insider threats and countering improvised explosive devices; and UKRI-funded research on the protection of critical national infrastructure.
Find out more about Tim here.
