Helen Knight - Senior Project Manager

As Senior Project Manager, Helen works closely with the Principal Investigator and the Executive Team to deliver the the aims of MaThRad on a day-to-day basis while maintaining alignment to the long-term vision to ensure project growth and impact.

Her responsibilities include, but are not limited to: relationship management with a large number of partners, internal and external communications, Human Resource management including PDRA training and internships, planning and implementing meetings, as well as financial administration, budget management, compliance and reporting.

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Kathrin Schütrumpf - Events Officer

Kathrin is the Events Officer for the Department of Statistics. Kathrin’s role supports the research strategy of the department with responsibility for an extensive visitor and conference programme. Kathrin supports all MaThRad events from inception to delivery.

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Théophile Bonnet

Théophile is a post-doctoral Research Associate at Cambridge University, and recently obtained his PhD from Université Paris-Saclay. His PhD project focused on correlations in stationary and time-dependent Monte Carlo simulations for neutron transport.

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Chris Dean

Chris is a member of the MaThRad team in Warwick, using his expertise to tackle problems posed by the MaThRad group and their industrial partners. Chris’ research interests include branching structures, growth models, and interacting particle systems

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Oliver Kelsey Tough

Oliver is  a Research Associate in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Bath. Previously, he spent two years as a post-doctorant at the Université de Neuchâtel, working with Michel Benaïm. He completed his PhD at Duke University in 2021, supervised by James Nolen. Prior to that, he obtained his BA and MMath at the University of Cambridge in 2016.

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Aaron Pim

Aaron joined the MaThRad team in January 2023 and is currently working with Tristan Pryer at the University of Bath on analysing and applying the methods of PDE constrained optimisation to the Boltzmann transport equation, in the context of treatment planning in proton radiation therapy.

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Valeria Raffuzzi

Valeria is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Cambridge working on improving Monte Carlo methods for neutron transport. Her research focuses on accelerating Monte Carlo simulations by using variable fidelity cross section representations. Valeria was involved in the development of SCONE (Stochastic Calculator Of the Neutron transport Equation), the University of Cambridge Monte Carlo particle transport code, and continues to contribute to the development of this unique software which is central to the MaThRad programme. 

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Esmae Woods

Esmae is a post-doctoral research assistant at the University of Cambridge. Her PhD project focused on the development of state reduction techniques for Markov Chains, to help understand dynamical processes within large ill-conditioned systems. Esmae joins the Cambridge team to help further develop SCONE (Stochastic Calculator Of the Neutron transport Equation).

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Prof Victor Rivero

Victor is a Mathematician based in the Department of Probability and Statistics in the Center of Research in Mathematics in Guanajuato, Mexico.  He specialises in the theory of Stochastic Processes as well as Renewal Theory, the theory of excursions from a set, and Markov Processes Theory.

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Pedro Martín Chávez

Pedro Martín Chávez is PhD student at the University of Extremadura. He has BSc in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Seville, and a MSc in Mathematics from the University of Extremadura. 

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Alasdair Crossley

Ali is currently completing a PhD in probability, working under the MaThRad grant at the University of Warwick, after completing his Master’s in Mathematics (MMath) at the University of Bath in 2022.His research interests lie in the field of probability and stochastic processes, his master’s thesis focused on stochastic processes with respect to cosmic rays.

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Veronika Chronholm

Veronika is a PhD student at the SAMBa Centre for Doctoral Training at the University of Bath. Her PhD research is supervised by Professor Tristan Pryer and Professor Alex Cox, and focuses on the intersection of stochastic models and partial differential equation models for proton radiation, in the application of proton beam therapy and radiotherapy treatment planning. Her interests also include PDE constrained optimisation, Monte Carlo methods, and numerical methods for PDEs.

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Matt Evans

Matt is a PhD student at the University of Bath, supervised by Tristan Pryer and Luca Zanett, Matt’s PhD project ‘Finite element methods for the Boltzmann neutron transport equation on polygonal and polyhedral meshes’ is being carried out in collaboration with the CEA, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission.

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Panagiotis Birmpakos

Panos is a Senior Clinical Scientist at the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust and PhD student at the University of Reading. He completed his Master’s in Medical and Radiation Physics at the University of Athens and has ten years of clinical experience in radiotherapy. His PhD research is supervised by Professor Marcus Tindall, Professor Tristan Pryer and Dr. Colin Baker and focuses on derivation of delivered dose of a proton beam via prompt gamma imaging. His interests also include treatment planning optimisation and Monte Carlo methods.

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Usman Laden

Usman Ladan is currently a PhD student in the Department of Statistics at the University of Warwick, working under the joint supervision of Andreas Kyprianou, Emma Horton and Adam Johansen. His research interests lie in the areas of stochastic processes, stochastic analysis, branching processes and Monte Carlo methods. His PhD work focuses on the modelling and simulation of neutron transport within nuclear reactors. Together with his supervisors, he will be understanding existing nuclear algorithms through a sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) framework in order to derive new SMC based algorithms with increased efficiency and performance.

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Daniel Hajnal

Daniel is a PhD student at the University of Bath, working on quantifying the personalised impact of physical and biological uncertainties in radiotherapy treatment planning. His research is jointly supervised by Tristan Pryer from the University of Bath and Mohammad Hussein (NPL), Ana Lourenco (NPL), and Catharine Clark (UCLH). The goal of the project is to help produce more personalised, thus safer radiotherapy treatment plans, by incorporating key patient-specific uncertainties, whether physical or biological.

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Maximillian Kraus

Max is a PhD student at the Cambridge Nuclear Energy Centre, working on developing a novel neutron transport method for transient neutron flux simulations. My work will introduce a time-dependent neutron transport solver based on the novel random ray method, which is able to deliver high-accuracy results for nuclear engineering problems of any complexity.

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Lucy Bland

Lucy Bland is a PhD student at the Cambridge Nuclear Energy Centre, working on The Random Rays Method, which has recently been demonstrated to hold significant promise with regards to computational efficiency of analysing criticality and shielding problems. Some of the unique features of the method are modest memory requirements and fast convergence on quantities of interest within the computational domain regardless of its size and complexity. These features make the method particularly attractive for modelling multi-physics systems.

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Martin Skretteberg

Martin Skretteberg is a PhD student at the Cambridge Nuclear Energy Centre, working on how time-dependent MC methods, and their coupling with multi-physics can be made more viable through variance reduction using classical methods of variance reduction as well as some novel methods based on machine learning.

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Jamie Edwards

Jamie is a PhD student at the Cambridge Nuclear Energy Centre, working on developing alternative geometric representations which are better suited to fusion geometries. One initial step towards this is the implementation of Bezier based geometry types in the Cambridge Monte Carlo code SCONE which has been completed and has shown potential. The project will involve testing new ways of describing geometry and different ways of performing neutron tracking on them. SCONE is the perfect place to try some geometry types and tracking methods initially.

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Jenny Power

Jenny is a PhD student at the University of Bath, working on brachytherapy treatment for cancer patients. Brachytherapy is a type of radiation treatment that consists of placing sealed, radioactive sources directly into or next to the tumour to be treated. These sources emit radiation which kills the tumour. The main question this project will address is “Where should these radioactive seeds be placed (and how many of them), such that the dose on the critical organs is minimised?”. The aim of this work is to develop a numerical model which will determine the optimal placements of these radioactive sources such that the damage on the critical organs and surrounding tissue is minimal, but the dose on the tumour is still high enough to eradicate it.

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Professor Dario Spano

Dario is a Professor in the Statistics Department at the University of Warwick. His interests are combinatorial stochastic processes, measure-valued processes and special functions arising in exchangeable and partially exchangeable models, with main applications in Mathematical Population Genetics, Bayesian Nonparametric Statistics.

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Professor Adam Johansen

Adam is a Professor of Statistics at the University of Warwick; his research focuses upon methodological and theoretical aspects of simulation-based algorithms.

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Dr Jere Koskela

Jere is a Reader of Statistics at Newcastle University. He completed his PhD on Monte Carlo inference in genetics at the University of Warwick Mathematics Institute in 2016. He was then a postdoc at TU Berlin, and faculty at the Warwick Department of Statistics for six years, prior to joining Newcastle in 2023. His research interests include probabilistic modelling, particularly with interacting particle systems and diffusions, Bayesian nonparametric statistics, and simulation-based inference algorithms.

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Dr Julia Brettschneider

Julia is a Reader in the Department of Statistics at the University of Warwick. She is a statistical data scientist with initial training in probability and ergodic theory, with a passion for interdisciplinary project-oriented work. Julia works closely with experts from domains including genomics, microscopy, neuroscience, medicine, epidemiology, wearable devices, manufacturing, complex projects monitoring, ecology, and crop management.

She develop methods to assess and optimise data quality, to maximise information and knowledge gained from experiments, and model joint and individual decision processes from axiomatic/rational as well as subjective/descriptive perspectives. She has a particular interest in explicit modeling of uncertainty in high-throughput scientific measurement processes.

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Dr Fillipe Georgiou

Fillipe is Mathematical Innovation Research Associate with the Institute for Mathematical Innovation (IMI) at the University of Bath. He has a wide-range of research interests encompassing collective behaviour, climate science, risk analysis, machine learning, and statistics. His enthusiasm lies in devising innovative solutions for complex challenges. 

Prior to joining the IMI, Fillipe engaged in a diverse array of projects. Serving as an embedded systems designer, he developed wireless telemetry units for equines to enable real-time health and fitness monitoring. Then, during his PhD, Fillipe investigated the impact of food distribution on locust group dynamics, uncovering insights into the interplay between food availability and group formation. Subsequently, his post-doctoral contributions with the Climate Risk Group involved assessing the global repercussions of climate change on physical assets. 

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Laura Hattam

Laura is Mathematical Innovation Research Associate with the Institute for Mathematical Innovation (IMI) at the University of Bath. Laura is an enthusiastic Applied Mathematics Researcher with superb numeracy and analytical skills; brings experience and understanding of mathematical modelling. Committed to finding innovative ways to manipulate, interpret and report data; works with an open mind and collaborates positively across disciplines to enhance knowledge.

Laura completed a PhD at Monash University and was a postdoc at Reading University before taking up her current position at the IMI.

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Dr Colin Baker

Colin is a Consultant Clinical Scientist, Head of Radiotherapy Physics at the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust and Visiting Professor at the University of Reading. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine and has over 25 years’ experience as a Radiotherapy Physicist in the NHS in addition to 9 years as Lecturer in Medical Physics at the University of Liverpool.

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Prof Alex Cox

Alex is a Professor of Probability at the University of Bath. Broadly, he is interested in any problems relating to optimisation under uncertainty. Previous work includes applications in economics and finance.

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Dr Emma Horton

Emma is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Warwick.

Her research interests include branching processes, growth-fragmentation processes, Feynman-Kac formulae and sequential Monte Carlo methods. I am particularly interested in applications to radiation transport such as the neutron transport equation, and telomere length dynamics.

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Prof Andreas Kyprianou (PI)

Andreas is a specialist in Probability Theory and is co-founder of the Probability Laboratory at Bath (Prob-L@B), based in the University’s Department of Mathematical Sciences in Bath, serving as its Director from 2007-2019. Between 2013 and 2022, he served as co-Director and PI of the multi-million-pound EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Statistical Applied Mathematics at Bath (SAMBa). Between 2020 and 2023,  he additionally served as Director of the Institute for Mathematical Innovation.

In 2023, he moved to the University of Warwick to take up a chair in Probability Theory. At Warwick, he has additionally taken on the role of Director of the Centre for Mathematical and Computing Science. Andreas is the PI of the MaThRad EPSRC programme grant.

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Dr Ana Lourenco

Ana is a member of the Medical Radiation Science group at the National Physical Laboratory. She is leading research to improve the dosimetry of proton therapy beams, including the development of tissue-equivalent materials, determination of kQ factors using calorimetric measurements and development of dosimetric audits. Ana is supervising a number of PhD and MSc students and she holds an Honorary Research position at the University College London, Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering Department.

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Dr Sarah Osman

Sarah is a Clinical Scientist working as a SABR and Imaging Trials Physicist at University College London Hospitals and for the National Radiotherapy Trials QA (RTTQA). She previously worked as a senior Clinical Scientist at the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust (Nov2020-April2022) and as research fellow at Queens University Belfast where she was also a member of the advanced radiotherapy group at the Northern Ireland Cancer Centre working on several projects related to clinical trials.

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Prof Geoff Parks

Geoff is a Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Cambridge.

Geoff heads the Computational Design Group in the Cambridge Engineering Design Centre, which researches into the application of advanced optimisation methods to difficult real-world problems in a wide variety of application areas including aerodynamic, nuclear and structural engineering, in the development and application of multiobjective optimisation methods, and in the effective exploitation and integration of optimisation methods within the Engineering Design process.

His research interests include Computational design, Multiobjective optimisation, Nuclear reactor design and simulation, In-core nuclear fuel management, Future nuclear systems, and Thorium-based nuclear fuel cycles.

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Prof Tristan Pryer

Tristan is a Professor of Numerical Analysis at the University of Bath since 2019. Prior to that he was Associate Professor the University of Reading. His research interests include the design and implementation of rigorous numerical schemes for complex fluids problems. He leverages these in, amongst others, healthcare applications like external beam radiotherapy treatment planning with collaborators and stakeholders over various NHS trusts, medical physics laboratories and international industrial partners.

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Prof Eugene Shwageraus

Eugene is a Professor in Nuclear Energy Systems Engineering at Cambridge University Engineering Department and he is the Course Director for the MPhil in Nuclear Energy.

His research is focused on physics and engineering of conventional and advanced nuclear power reactors, with a particular interest in Monte Carlo methods applied to radiation transport, as well as modelling of nuclear systems to assist policy decision making.

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Prof Paul Smith

Paul has 46 years’ experience as a mathematical modeller, including 39 years in the nuclear industry. 

Paul is the Technical Director of the ANSWERS software service, developing software for reactor physics, criticality and shielding for the nuclear industry worldwide. In particular he has been involved in the application of data assimilation to radiation transport to reduce uncertainty associated with predictive models.

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