Dr Robert Leese has been Director of the Smith Institute and a member of its Council since 1999 and Director of the Knowledge Transfer Network for Industrial Mathematics since its establishment in 2005. He previously held Research Fellowships at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and a visiting position at Brown University. Robert holds a PhD in mathematical physics from the University of Durham and has been a Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford, since 1993. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and a member of the Peer Review College of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Dr Heather Tewkesbury joined the Smith Institute in 2001, has been Business Development Director since 2006 and a member of Council since 2010. Previously she worked as Modelling Development Manager for Cadbury Trebor Bassett, applying mathematics across all areas of the business. Heather holds a PhD in modelling heat transfer from the University of Birmingham. She is a Chartered Mathematician, Fellow and Vice President of Professional Affairs at the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.

Dr Tim Boxer joined the Smith Institute in 2002. Previously, he worked for ArjoWiggins as a Diagnostic Engineer, where he worked on time series and signal analysis, flow through compressible porous media and linear elastic beams. More recently Tim's interests have developed into the areas of probabilistic modelling and decision making under uncertainty. Tim holds a PhD in modelling industrial processes from UMIST, and an MSc in Industrial Applied Mathematics from the University of Southampton.

Dr David Allwright joined the Smith Institute in 2000. He holds a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge and worked as a Research Fellow on control theory at the Universities of Cambridge and Toronto. David's technical interests then expanded at Topexpress Ltd to include signal processing, acoustics, vibration and other areas of fluid and solid mechanics, and then further, to other wave phenomena and probabilistic and Markov models at the University of Oxford and the Smith Institute.

Dr Melvin Brown joined the Smith Institute in 2001. Previously he worked for British Energy, Nuclear Electric, Dowty Fuel Systems and Rolls-Royce, in the areas of sensitivity and uncertainty analysis, failure modes and effects analysis, and dynamic simulation. Melvin holds a PhD in the foundations of quantum mechanics from the University of London, an MSc in Nuclear Reactor Technology from the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and an MSc in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from the University of Liverpool. Melvin is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Physics.

Dr Chris Cawthorn joined the Smith Institute in 2011. He previously worked for HR Wallingford as a scientist, developing and supporting the TELEMAC modelling system for free surface fluid flows. Chris holds a PhD in granular continuum mechanics and an MMath degree, both from the University of Cambridge. His principal areas of interest include scientific computation, continuum modelling and numerical analysis.

Dr Claudia Centazzo joined the Smith Institute in 2006 as Business Development Manager. Previously she was an Assistant Lecturer at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Belgium. Claudia holds a PhD in category theory from UCL and an MSc in Mathematics from Dalhousie University in Canada. Claudia is the co-author of a book chapter on categorical foundations, published by Cambridge University Press in 2004, and she is also fluent in Italian, French and Spanish.

Dr Caroline Edwards joined the Smith Institute in 2008. Caroline holds a PhD in structural topology optimisation and an MSc in Modern Applications of Mathematics both from the University of Bath. Caroline’s areas of interest include numerical analysis, linear solver techniques, linear elasticity and finite element modelling.

Dr Vera Hazelwood joined the Smith Institute in 2005. She holds a PhD in Applied Optics from the University of Southampton, and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Kiev State Shevchenko University. Vera's technical areas of expertise are the mathematical modelling of complex systems, optics of liquid crystals, nonlinear phenomena, numerical methods for solving differential and integral equations and Monte-Carlo techniques. Vera holds a PRINCE2TM Practitioner qualification in project management, an ISEB ISTQB certificate in Software Testing, and won the Institute of Physics prize for Best PhD Thesis in Computational Physics in 2006. Vera is a Committee member of the IoP’s Computational Physics Group.

Lorcán Mac Manus joined the Smith Institute in 2009. Previously he worked as a Research Associate in the Computer Laboratory of Cambridge University on a Panasonic sponsored project; as a research and development engineer in a speech recognition group in Autonomy; as a Lecturer in the Dublin Institute of Technology and as a research and development engineer in Analog Devices. His research interests are in statistical signal processing and his work has focused primarily on speech, music and image processing. Lorcán attended Trinity College, Dublin where he received BAI and BA degrees and a research Masters degree in Electronic Engineering.

Dr Paul Munday joined the Smith Institute in 2010. Previously he worked for the civil service as a mathematical modeller. He holds a DPhil in Statistics and an MMath degree, both from the University of Oxford. Paul is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and his areas of interest include statistical inference and stochastic modelling.

Dr Rushen Patel joined the Smith Institute in 2010. He holds a PhD in Control Theory from Imperial College London and an MEng in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Cambridge. His research interests include dynamic modelling & simulation, optimal control, model predictive control, path planning and mathematical programming. Rushen previously worked for a biotechnology start-up company based at Kyushu University in Japan.