Food and Global Governance Round Table Events
The third of our 50th Anniversary international events took place on Wednesday 10th and Thursday 11th June 2015, in Brussels at the Greater Birmingham and West Midlands Brussels Office. The event was organised by the University of Warwick and supported by colleagues in our Brussels office.
Led by the University of Warwick's Global Research Priorities (GRP) programmes , this event brought together Warwick and Brussels' experts working in the field of Food, Global Governance and International Development. The sessions focused on areas such as the honeybee decline in Europe and the concern for future availability of honeybee pollination; the tools that are available to implement the sustainable use of pesticides; and emerging trends in transnational governance, including the Bangladesh Accord and the Ruggie Framework, to regulate labour and human rights violation in global supply chains. Full details of each event held are available from the links in the timetable below.
The University’s Global Research Priorities programme is part of Warwick’s strategy to bring together our major areas of research strength around key global priorities and challenges currently confronting the world. With ten themes in total, the programme supports multi-disciplinary research by offering a platform from which to showcase our world-leading research, and a forum in which to engage our multiple research users throughout the research process.
Big Data Panel Discussion - Economic Applications of Big Data
Solvay Library, Brussels, 11 June 2015
The use of Big Data will change how we make decisions in business and society in the future. It presents great opportunities to help us develop new skills, new creative products and services which can boost growth, jobs and investment in Europe. In recognition of the European Commission’s 2014 strategy to accelerate the transition towards a data-driven economy, this event’s theme was Economic Applications of Big Data. It enabled policy-makers, businesses and academics to come together to explore the challenges and opportunities Big Data presents.
The discussion panel included:
John Higgins CBE was appointed Director General of
DIGITALEUROPE, the association for the digital technology industry in Europe, in November 2011 following nine years leading its UK member association, Intellect.
John is a member of the governing body of the University of Warwick and recent chair of its audit committee. John is President of the European Commission’s Strategic Policy Forum on Digital Entrepreneurship and was recently elected to the Board of the European Internet Foundation. John’s other recent committee chair roles include the cross industry association council of the CBI, a government/industry space committee and the global policy action committee of the World IT Services Association, WITSA. He was board member of e-skills, the UK’s digital sector skills council and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He was presented with two personal awards for outstanding contributions; first to the association sector in 2004 and then to the IT industry in 2008. The Queen appointed him a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2005 for his services to the UK IT industry.
Mark Girolami joined the Department in January 2014 as a Professor of Statistics. He holds an honorary professorship in Computer Science at Warwick, is an EPSRC Established Career Fellow (2012 - 2017) and previously an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow (2007 - 2012). He is also honorary Professor of Statistics at University College London, is the Director of the EPSRC funded Research Network on
Computational Statistics and Machine Learning and in 2011 was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh when he was also awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. He is the lead academic for Warwick in the
Alan Turing Institute for Data Science.
His research and that of his group covers the investigation and development of advanced novel statistical methodology driven by applications in the life, clinical, physical, chemical, engineering and ecological sciences. He also works closely with industry where he has several patents leading from his work on e.g. activity profiling in telecommunications networks and developing statistical techniques for the machine based identification of counterfeit currency which is now an established technology used in current Automated Teller Machines.
Paul Brook is responsible for Cloud and Big Data business programs across Europe, Middle East and Africa [EMEA]. His remit includes working with leading customers, business partners and technology integrators to deliver open source based Cloud and Big Data solutions that make money and save money for partners and customers.Paul was previously responsible for various programs within Dell, including Hyperscale/Cloud and High Performance Computing. Prior to Dell Paul worked in varied Sales and Product Management roles within the Applications Development and Managed Services sectors. Before joining the IT industry Paul worked for a UK Consultancy that specialised in Business Performance Improvement.
Jörgen Gren is a member of the cabinet of M Ansip, Vice-president of the European Commission and responsible for the Digital Single Market.
His career in the Commission started in 1996 and he has held administrator posts in DG TREN and DG REGIO, and head of unit post in DG INFSO/CONNECT. Jörgen Gren served as head of the press/media unit for the 2009 Swedish presidency. Directly prior to the Swedish presidency, he was a member of the cabinet of Ms Hübner, Polish commissioner for regional policy.
He was educated in France (MA, institut d'études politiques) and in the UK at Queens' college, Cambridge (M.Phil, PhD).
