Inaugural Professorial Lecture – Professor Peter Whigham

The language of models

About Professor Peter Whigham's research:
Peter is a computational modeller whose research ranges from developing fundamental algorithms through to applications in a broad range of disciplines. His interest in modelling started in the early 1990s, working at CSIRO in Australia. Developing approaches to understand ecological systems led to a fundamental question: What is an appropriate language to describe and model spatial and temporal processes? He developed an evolutionary algorithm to search the space of possible sentences defined by a grammar, a model that is extensively used today in the field of Genetic Programming. He has worked with academics from Surveying, Design Studies, Economics, Finance, Public Health, Medicine, Botany, Zoology, Geography, Anatomy and Structural Biology and Physical Education and is proud to be a multi-disciplinary researcher. He has received four teaching awards, supervised 22 PhD students to completion, and is currently working on satellite methods for detection of methane, price elasticity in economics and sleep patterns in adolescents.

Refreshments will be served after the lecture.