Northernlands 2 - Speakers

Northernlands 2 is a special 2-day ONLINE event that will build on the success of the first Northernlands event whilst exploring new topics and challenges that have risen from the pandemic. Here are the currently confirmed speakers for the day:

Speakers

• Brechje Schwachöfer

  Acting Ambassador for the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the UK

  
  © Brechje Schwachöfer

  Brechje Schwachöfer studied Dutch and International Law at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She also completed a Masters in Law and Economics at the University of Rotterdam.

  Brechje Schwachöfer joined the Foreign Service in 1996. During her diplomatic career, her postings abroad included Pretoria, Brussels and New York. At the Ministry headquarters in The Hague, she served as Assistant Spokesperson, Private Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Head of the Europe Directorate section and Deputy Director Europe Directorate. She also worked at the European External Action Service, in the Conflict Prevention Unit.

  In August 2016, she was appointed Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in London.

• Jeni Tennison

  Vice President and Chief Strategy Advisor, Open Data Institute

  
  © ODI 2019

  Jeni Tennison is the Vice President and Chief Strategy Advisor of the Open Data Institute. She gained a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, then worked as an independent consultant specialising in open data publishing and consumption. She was the Technical Architect and Lead Developer for legislation.gov.uk before joining the ODI as Technical Director in 2012, becoming CEO in 2016, and Vice President in 2019.

  Jeni sits on the UK's Open Standards Board; the Advisory Board for the Open Contracting Partnership; the Board of Ada, the UK's National College for Digital Skills; the Co-operative’s Digital Advisory Board; and the Board of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data.

• Ben Goldacre

  Author, campaigner, broadcaster, doctor

  
  © Ben Goldacre

  Ben Goldacre is a doctor, best-selling author, academic and campaigner. His work focuses on uses and misuses of science and statistics by journalists, politicians, drug companies and quacks. His book Bad Science reached #1 in the UK non-fiction charts and has sold over half a million copies worldwide. He has published extensively in all major newspapers and various academic journals, and appears regularly on radio and TV from Newsnight to QI. He has written government papers and reports on evidence based policy, founded a successful global campaign for research transparency, and currently works as an academic in the University of Oxford, where he runs the EBMdataLab building live data tools to make science and medicine better, like OpenPrescribing and OpenTrials. His blog is at www.badscience.net and he is @bengoldacre on twitter.

• Paul Connell

  Founder, ODI Leeds

  
  © ODI Leeds 2019

  Paul is an entrepreneur and specialist in innovation, his experience and knowledge means that he has developed a unique skill-set in the field Open Innovation, Data & Smart & Future Cities.

  He founded ODI Leeds in November 2013 and DataCity in 2016.

  ODI Leeds is a pioneer node of the Open Data Institute. It was created to explore and deliver the potential of open innovation with data at city scale. It works to improve lives, help people and create value.

  DataCity is a Data as a Service (DaaS) company that is using Big Data and AI to understand the economy in real time.

• Mr Gee

  Poet

  
  © Mr Gee 2020

  Mr Gee has been a veteran on the UK's Spoken Word scene for two decades. Perhaps best known as the "Poet Laureate" on Russell Brand's Radio show, he has toured the world many times with the Comedian & his work has featured in the Times, The Guardian & the New Statesman. He's presented several radio series: "Bespoken Word", "Rhyme & Reason" & "Poetic Justice" all on BBC Radio 4, the latter of which focused on the extensive rehabilitation work that he does in prisons.

  Mr Gee has delivered two Tedx talks and was a host for the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Forum in London. He was also a featured guest on Akala's BBC 2 program "Poetry Between the Lines" and his poetry launched the 2017 Barbour International Spring season. He currently runs the Poetry night Chill Pill within London.

• Marc Farr

  Founder, Beautiful Information

  
  © Marc Farr 2019

  On leaving the management consultancy Experian Marc joined UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis as a senior research fellow. It was there that he made initial contact with Dr Foster, analysing the relationship between geodemography and health outcomes. They were looking at the use of postcode level statistics to standardise hospital mortality rates alongside variables such as age, sex and diagnosis to enable hospitals to be compared with one another.

  In 2004 Marc joined Dr Foster as Director of Product Development where he oversaw the company’s development of tools across clinical benchmarking, financial management and health needs mapping. In 2007 Marc was made Honorary Professor at UCL in the field of Geomatic and Civil Engineering. In 2010 he joined East Kent University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust where he is Director of Information responsible for informatics, coding and clinical systems. Marc is a graduate of the King’s Fund future leaders course and was named in the HSJ Top 50 Innovators in Health 2013.

• Stian Westlake

  Chief Executive, Royal Statistical Society

  
  © Stian Westlake 2019

  Stian is the new Chief Executive of the Royal Statistical Society. Before this, he served as policy adviser to three UK science and innovation ministers, and spent eight years at Nesta, the UK's national foundation for innovation, where he ran the organisation's think-tank. He co-wrote Capitalism Without Capital (2017), a book about the knowledge economy, which was selected as a Book of the Year by the Financial Times, The Economist and Marginal Revolution, and Tomorrow, Interrupted, a book about productivity growth, which will come out in 2021.

• Tim van Deursen

  Technologist, Founder of Hack the Planet

  
  © Tim van Deursen 2020

  Tim van Deursen is an engineer on a mission to make a positive contribution to the world. Tim wants to super charge high-tech efforts needed to solve big global challenges. He believes many such challenges we nowadays have can benefit from smart easy to deploy technology. Technology can and needs to be part of solving global challenges.

• Tom Bridges

  Director City Advisory, ARUP

  
  © Tom Bridges 2020

  Tom is a professional in city strategy, urban and regional policy and planning, transport, economic development, regeneration, and city governance and operations. He is a chartered member of the RTPI.

  Tom re-joined Arup in January 2018. Tom leads Arup’s City Advisory practice, advising on city and regional strategies for economic development, inclusive growth, infrastructure, skills and innovation, supporting clients on funding and finance, socio- economic advice, housing, and regeneration. Tom is the Leader of Arup’s 400-strong Leeds office.

  He was Chief Officer Economy and Regeneration of Leeds City Council 2012 to 2018, responsible for Leeds City Council’s economic development, property and regeneration functions. Tom led the work to produce the Leeds Inclusive Growth Strategy, and the Leeds City Region high-speed rail growth strategy. He oversaw the South Bank Leeds and Leeds Innovation District projects which will double the size and economic contribution of Leeds City Centre. Tom also helped develop the Northern Powerhouse strategy, producing proposals on education and skills.

• Stefania Milan

  Principal Invesitgator, DATACTIVE

  
  © Stefania Milan

  Stefania Milan is Associate Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. Her work explores the interplay between digital technology, activism and governance. She is the Principal Investigator of DATACTIVE, a project financed by the European Research Council exploring data- and algorithmic-mediated forms of political participation (data-activism.net). She is also the Project Leader of "Citizenship and standard-setting in digital networks", funded by the Dutch Research Council, and co-Principal Investigator in the Marie Curie Innovative Training Network "Early language development in the digital age".

  In 2018-20 she directed the Algorithms Exposed (ALEX) project, tasked with developing open source software tools for auditing personalization algorithms on social media and online shopping platforms. In 2017, she co-founded the Big Data from the South Research Initiative, a network of academics and practitioners critically investigating the impact of datafication and surveillance on communities at the margins. Stefania holds a PhD in Political and Social Science from the European University Institute. Prior to joining the University of Amsterdam, she worked at, among others, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and the Central European University. Stefania is the author of Social Movements and Their Technologies: Wiring Social Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013/2016) and co-author of Media/Society (Sage, 2011). She enjoys experimenting with digital and action-oriented research methods and finding ways to bridge research with policy and action.

• Sander van der Waal

  Lead Future Internet Lab, Waag

  
  © Sander van der Waal 2020

  Sander van der Waal is the lead of the Future Internet Lab at Waag, working to ensure that human values are core to how technology and data are designed and deployed in society, based on Waag’s principles of openness, fairness, and inclusivity.

  Sander has an educational background in computer science and philosophy, and has solid expertise and experience in open source software development, open data and knowledge, and data infrastructures.

• Professor Barend Mons

  President at CODATA, Founder of GO FAIR

  
  © Barend Mons 2020

  Barend Mons is a global expert on FAIR principles and he led the 5 day long early meeting in January 2014 (Leiden) where the principles were first defined. Originally a molecular biologist with 15 years of basic research experience on malaria parasites and vaccines, he refocused in 2000 on semantic technologies and later on Open Science. He has thus been in this field from the very beginning and started various early movements for open science ‘avant la lettre’ (a.o. Wiki professional, Concept Web Alliance). Mons published over 100 peer reviewed articles and more recently a handbook named: Data Stewardship for Open Science. He was the senior author on the now widely cited FAIR principles paper in Nature’s Scientific Data in 2016. In 2015, Barend was appointed Chair of the High Level Expert Group (HLEG) for the European Open Science Cloud, and the group published its report, which marked a critical step towards realising the aspiration of the EOSC. After leaving the HLEG he continued to be active towards the practical realisation of the EOSC, defined in the report as the Internet of FAIR data and services. Three countries (The Netherlands, Germany and France) took the early initiative to create a Global, Open approach to the implementation of FAIR principles in practice, called GO FAIR, with the aim to kick-start the developments towards EOSC in a global, open science and innovation context. Mons was appointed director of the Dutch International Support and Coordination Office of the infinitive with sister offices in Germany and France. He is also the elected president of CODATA, the standing committee on research data related issues of the International Science Council.

• Matthew Clancy

  Economist, Iowa State University

  
  © Matthew Clancy 2020

  Matthew Clancy is an economist working on the economics of innovation, currently at Iowa State University and formerly at the United States Department of Agriculture. Though he currently lives in the American Midwest, he lived in the United Kingdom for several years, working and studying. He has written about remote work for City Journal and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

• Jack Hardinges

  Programme Lead - Data Institutions
  The Open Data Institute

  
  © The ODI 2020

  Jack is Programme Lead for Data Institutions at the ODI. He is responsible for the strategic direction of the ODI’s work to explore different approaches to data stewardship, leading the delivery of related projects and building partnerships with other organisations.

  Recently, his work has focused on involving the public, patients and other stakeholders in the stewardship of health data, and the flows of data between cities and private sector organisations.

• Leigh Dodds

  Director of Advisory
  The Open Data Institute

  
  © The ODI 2020

  Leigh has 17 years of experience working in a variety of technology focused roles including software engineer, product manager, technical consultant and CTO. Leigh spent 10 years working in the publishing industry dealing with data integration and management issues. At Publishing Technology whilst CTO of their scholarly division, Leigh was responsible for designing an innovative publishing framework based on semantic web technology. On moving to Talis Group in 2011, Leigh became responsible for programme manager for their “Data as a Service” products, overseeing product development and launching their Linked Data consulting business.

  Recently Leigh has been working as an independent technical consultant helping businesses explore technology and best practices that support the integration and publication of Linked Data and Open Data. Leigh has worked with a variety of organisations ranging from small startups through to large multi-national businesses. Leigh also enjoys writing and has worked as a freelance author publishing articles and training materials for O’Reilly and IBM.

• Laura McInerney

  Founder
  Teacher Tapp

  
  © Laura MicInerney 2020

  Laura McInerney is an education journalist, former secondary teacher, and co-founder of Teacher Tapp, the daily app uncovering the secret lives of teachers. She started her career in east London comprehensives and taught for six years before being taken to court by Michael Gove for asking a difficult question about free schools. (She won, eventually).

  Following this, Laura became a journalist, writing a monthly column in The Guardian and editing Schools Week, where her team won national awards for their hard-hitting scoops. She is now the co-founder of Teacher Tapp, an app revealing previously unknown insights about teachers’ lives.

• David Egan

  Co-founder and CEO
  Core Life Analytics

  
  © David Egan 2020

  David Egan is the co-founder and CEO of Core Life Analytics, a Netherlands-based technology company that gives biologists the ability to analyze their own data. While working at the Salk Institute in LA Jolla, CA David became interested in the use of automation for drug discovery. This led to a career in delivering high through screening services in the pharmaceuticals industry and academia. Core Life Analytics was founded by David with Wienand Omta in 2016 based on the StratoMineR platform developed by David & Wienand at the Cell Screening Core at the University Medical Center Utrecht.

  The StratoMineR platform is being successfully used by customers globally, at companies such as Pfizer, Astra Zeneca & Janssen; as well as academic centers of excellence such as the University of Michigan and Oxford University. In 2020 the founders secured a Series A investment of €1m to further expand the marketing, sales, & development of the platform.

• Emma Vestesson

  Senior Data Analyst
  The Health Foundation

  
  © Emma Vestesson 2020

  Emma is a senior data analyst at the Health Foundation where she works on quantitative evaluations of healthcare interventions. Prior to joining the Health Foundation, Emma worked as a senior data analyst for the Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme (SSNAP). Previous to this she worked as an economic researcher consultant for the World Intellectual Property Organization. She is an organiser for R-ladies London.

  Emma has an undergraduate degree in mathematics and economics from Lund University, Sweden and a Master’s degree in specialized economics from Barcelona Graduate school of Economics, Spain. She is currently is currently doing a part-time PhD in health data science at UCL.

• Mieke Masselink

  Head of the Smart Mobility Embassy community

  
  © Mieke Masselink 2020

  Mieke Masselink works for Connekt as Head of the Smart Mobility Embassy community. Connekt is a Dutch public-private network organization in trusted collaboration for Dutch industry, science and government, with a strong international focus on smart mobility & sustainable logistics. Mieke joined Connekt in 2015 and became the Head of New Business, focusing mainly on international collaborations. She organized multiple trade missions, study trips and events with the aim of creating a greater impact on society with smart mobility solutions initiated and accelerated through collaboration. Since 2020 Mieke has been leading the Smart Mobility Embassy, which focuses specifically on sharing Dutch knowledge and experiences in smart & green mobility.

• Waheedur Rahman Nabeel

  Consultant (Public Sector), KPMG UK

  
  © Waheedur Rahman Nabeel 2020

  Waheed is a Consultant for KPMG’s public sector data analytics practise focusing on implementing technology delivery projects for central and local government bodies in the UK.

  He is currently leading the User Experience (UX) and Research team for the Beta workstreams of the Bus Open Data (BODS) project delivered on behalf of the Department for Transport (DfT) in the UK. The BODS project aims to open up high quality bus data across England to researchers, innovators, app developers, policy makers and the general public.

• Dr. Amber Walraven

  Assistant professor - Radboud Teachers Academy

  I am an assistant professor at the Radboud Teachers Academy, the university-based ITE institute. I teach general didactics and design & research.

  As a researcher I am interested in both students and teachers and how they can 'make the most' of education, teaching and learning together. What is the role of a teacher, or a student, how do their views on learning impact teaching and learning, what is the role of the curriculum? How do you help students and teachers to take a look at 'today' and use that to shape their next lesson, course, project? I firmly believe education is 'on the move' and we can improve it by asking and answering the right questions, together. I have an extra interest in the role of ict in this whole process.

  For a three year project on adaptive expertise of teachers, our research team is running the Dutch version of Teacher Tapp. My role in our research is mostly focused on Teacher Tapp.

• Amy Bridge

  Project Manager, Ito World

  
  © Amy Bridge 2020

  Amy is a Project Manager at Ito World, the tech and transit data specialists behind the Department for Transport's Bus Open Data Service (BODS). Ito World has worked with Department for Transport since on the BODS programme since 2018, alongside KPMG.

  Ito World solves transportation challenges across the globe for millions of travellers every day, by delivering real-time transit data feeds to journey planners and a platform for transit authorities and operators. Our mission is to deliver data that is as close to the real-life experience of the traveller as possible. With offices in London and Cambridge, we serve clients from all over the world, such as Apple, Google, TomTom, Arriva, and Go-Ahead.

• Richard Mason

  Information Strategy Manager, Transport for the North

  
  © Richard Mason 2020

  Richard has worked in the public transport customer information space since September 2004, starting out at South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (SYPTE) in various roles from data acquisition and management through to leading the transformation of raw operator data into meaningful customer information across print, web and digital.

  Through his role at Transport for the North (TfN), Richard sits on the DfT Bus Open Data programme board – helping to shape national policy with partners from the transport industry. His current role at TfN is a strategic position to drive the adoption of a consistent customer information strategy across the North, working alongside 20 Local Transport Authorities and the tech sector. In parallel, Richard also leads on the fares data build tool project by TfN and engagement with open data developers across the UK to influence and encourage them to adopt TfN and pan Northern datasets.