The Speakers
Dr Liam Brierley, Research Fellow, University of Liverpool
Liam Brierley is a research fellow at the University of Liverpool. His research uses biostatistics, genetics, and evolution to predict which viruses are likely to cause the next pandemic and which animals they might originate from. He is also interested in how open science can improve epidemiology, from text mining to rigour of preprints. Liam is one of the RSS Statistical Ambassadors, a group of volunteers trained to communicate statistics to the media and general public. He has spoken to national radio and print media about how careful use of data can save lives and has performed science outreach shows at venues across the UK, including Pint of Science, Science Discovery Day, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Manira Ahmad, Chief Officer, Public Health Scotland
Manira has had a varied career history spanning both private and public sectors. She has worked across the financial industry, involved in global workforce planning and investment in offshore trading.
Manira joined the public sector in 2015, and was appointed to lead the deployment of Local Intelligence across Health & Social Care. Supporting Integration Authorities in Scotland in co-designing linked data across multiple care sectors to support improved decision making for health and well-being.
Manira has been part of the design and development of Public Health Scotland, delivering an organisation equipped to meet Scotland's future public health challenges and developing a nation where everyone thrives. More recently her efforts have been focused on the response and recovery from this pandemic, spanning both local and national systems.
Manira has been learning and sharing across Health, Care and Community settings, seeking opportunities to collaborate with different nations in order to bring innovative solutions using data and intelligence to support communities across Scotland.
Manira is very passionate in supporting the well-being of individuals, working closely with communities to build local resilience through story-telling by shifting our thinking and the conversation to “what really matters”.
In her personnel time, Manira sits on the Board for a number of local charity and community organisations including the “Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector” and “Scottish Minority Ethnic Women’s Network”.
Sophie Carr, Director, Bays Consulting
Sophie grew up loving Lego, physics and aeroplanes. Whilst working as an aeronautical engineer, she became interested in information overload and learnt about Bayesian statistics which changed her career path. Sophie is still utterly fascinated by aeroplanes, but it turns out she loves data, numbers, maths and statistics even more. She’s the founder of Bays Consulting and the World’s Most Interesting Mathematician.