Photo by Jonathan Tickner

Tara is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Glasgow working in geometric group theory.  After receiving her PhD from Columbia University, she was a VIGRE Assistant Professor at Cornell University and later held an Assistant Professorship at Louisiana State University before moving to Glasgow in 2008. Tara was an appointed member of the Scottish Government working group Making Maths Count, helping to launch the inaugural Maths Week Scotland in 2017.  She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the American Mathematical Society, and currently serves as the President of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society.

Nira Chamberlain is Mathematical Modelling Technical Fellow for AtkinsRéalis and is also a Visiting Professor at Loughborough University. With over 30 years’ experience of mathematical modelling, simulation, and developing algorithms that solve complex engineering and commercial problems, Nira was the President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications from 2020 to 2021 and  the President of The Mathematical Association in 2023. In 2018, Nira was the winner of the Big Math Off title “World’s Most Interesting Mathematician” and is currently the Chair of the Black Heroes of Mathematics Conference. Nira is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and of the Operational Research Society and was awarded an OBE for services to mathematical sciences in 2022.

Simon is Head of Philanthropy at XTX Markets, an algorithmic trading company headquartered in London. The company’s philanthropy focuses on excellence in maths and science education, and on supporting the development of global talent. Prior to joining XTX Markets, he started his career as an economics and history teacher in an inner-city school. He then left the classroom to co-found The Brilliant Club, a university access charity that mobilises PhD researchers to work as tutors in state schools. He sits on the board of the Martingale Foundation, the Teach for All Network and Voice21.

Alison Etheridge OBE FRS is Professor of Probability at the University of Oxford where she holds a joint appointment in the Mathematical Institute and the Department of Statistics. She has previously held positions at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Cambridge; the University of Edinburgh; and Queen Mary University of London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a former President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. She has been Chair of the Council for the Mathematical Sciences since September 2021. Leicester.

Dr Andrew Garrett is President of the Royal Statistical Society and co-chair of its Climate Change Task Force.  He was previously a Board member of the UK’s Administrative Data Research Network and currently serves on the UK Statistical Authority’s Research Accreditation Panel that oversees the accreditation of research projects, researchers, and processing environments in accordance with the Digital Economy Act. He has worked for approaching 40 years in drug development at number of pharmaceutical and service companies and he is currently Executive Vice President, Scientific Operations at ICON.  Andy is a Chartered Statistician with a BSc in Economics, an MSc in Medical Statistics, and a PhD in Applied Statistics. He has worked extensively in rare diseases and his published work includes papers on the topics of non-inferiority trials, subgroup analysis, data transparency, and modelling and simulation.

Paul Glaister is Professor of Mathematics and Mathematics Education in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Reading. He has 42 years of teaching and leadership experience in higher education including teaching many applied mathematics courses at undergraduate, postgraduate, and foundation level; responsibility for the school-university transition, and teaching and learning more widely; and a five-year term as head of department. Paul has 470+ publications spanning research in numerical analysis, mathematics/ science education, and teaching and learning.

Seb Hargreaves is the Executive Director of the Operational Research Society. He excels at building communities and has forged a career supporting voluntary sector and member-based organisations to be the best they can be. During his over 20-year career he has worked for the Royal Air Force and spent over a decade supporting nationally recognised military charities. He has also worked at a senior level for the Association of NHS Charities, co-leading a £150M fundraising campaign and taking them through an unprecedented level of membership growth during the Covid years. Seb manages the staff team at the OR Society and helps to design and deliver the strategy for the organisation.

Jon Keating is a mathematical physicist who has made contributions to the fields of quantum chaos, which is the study of the quantum mechanical properties of complex systems, and random matrix theory, and developed links between these areas and pure mathematics. He is known for his work connecting random matrix theory with the distribution of prime numbers through the statistical properties of the Riemann zeta-function, and for establishing applications of ideas from quantum chaos and random matrix theory to a wide range of areas of science and technology.

Jens Marklof is Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Bristol, and President of the London Mathematical Society. Marklof graduated from Hamburg (Dipl-Phys 1994) and Ulm (PhD 1997), and held research fellowships at Princeton University, Hewlett-Packard, the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifique and the Laboratoire de Physique Theorique et Modeles Statistiques near Paris. He joined Bristol in 1999 as a University Lecturer and served as Head of the School of Mathematics and Dean of the Faculty of Science. His areas of expertise include dynamical systems and ergodic theory, quantum chaos, and the theory of automorphic forms. In 2015 he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society.

Dr. Gilbert Owusu is a Data & AI Director at BT Group. He has a strong track record in applying AI and operational modelling technologies which have led to significant customer service improvements and OPEX reduction in BT’s operations. Gilbert’s work on applying AI and OR technologies for transforming service operations have been published widely in book chapters, conferences, and journals. He is the co-editor of two books on service production management. Gilbert is the current President of the Operational Research Society, a visiting professor at University of Essex and University of Leicester.

Ulrike Tillmann is a mathematician who has worked in topology, K-theory, and non-commutative geometry. Her well-known work on moduli spaces has been motivated by problems in quantum physics and string theory, while some of her recent work in applied topology addresses challenges in data science.

Born in Germany, Tillmann attended her local grammar school. With the help of a Wien Scholarship she studied at Brandeis University and later received her PhD from Stanford University.  Following a post-doctoral position in Cambridge she spent most of her career in Oxford and Merton College. Currently she is the Rothschild & Sons Professor in Cambridge, Director of the Isaac Newton Institute,   and a Vice-President of the International Mathematical Union (IMU).