Dan Cornford
Managing Director​
Role​
I joined IGI in 2011, having previously worked in academia as a researcher and lecturer for almost 20 years. My role in IGI has evolved from having a focus on our software products, to a more general management role. I see management as a service, and still find time to work with the software team on our tools, and with our consultancy team and clients around using the tools, especially statistical analysis and machine learning.​
​
Vision​
I am a scientist. And a pragmatic Bayesian. We have models, and we have data. The world can only make sense combining them, accounting for uncertainty. In IGI we are trying to build the best tool for managing, visualising, exploring and interpreting geochemical data. I find the topic of integrating data and models, that is data assimilation, endlessly interesting and apply tools from mathematics, statistics and machine learning to optimise this.​
​
Expertise​
My expertise runs across probabilistic modelling, including machine learning, visualisation and data exploration. I have also contributed to developments in data assimilation and inverse problems. In particular I work on managing uncertainty in environmental models, including coordinating the UncertWeb project and collaborating on the Managing Uncertainty in Complex Models project.​
​
Background​
I have a BSc in Maths and Meteorology from Reading University (1991), an MSc in Climatology and Applied Meteorology from the University of Birmingham (1992) and a PhD in spatial statistics and climatology from the University of Birmingham (1996). I joined the Neural Computing Research Group at Aston University in 1996 as a postdoctoral research fellow, working on applying machine learning and statistical methods to satellite data assimilation in weather forecasting. In 1999 I was appointed as a Lecturer in Computer Science at Aston University. I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2007 and Reader in 2010. I joined IGI part time in April 2011 as the Software Products Manager. I became a Director of IGI in January 2012. I finally left the university in 2018.​
​
Outside work​
When not working, I like to spend time in my garden, or fishing (but not always catching) around the coast of North Devon where my family and I now live. From time to time my youngest ignites the latent twitcher in me and we’ll go bird watching.​
