Keynote speakers

Dr Hannah Fry

Dr Hannah Fry is an associate professor in the mathematics of cities at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL where she studies patterns in human behaviour.

Her research applies to a wide range of social problems and questions, from shopping and transport to urban crime, riots and terrorism.

Her critically acclaimed BBC documentaries include Horizon: Diagnosis on Demand? The Computer Will See You Now, Britain’s Greatest Invention, City in the Sky (BBC Two), Magic Numbers: Hannah Fry’s Mysterious World of Maths, The Joy of Winning, The Joy of Data, Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic and Calculating Ada (BBC Four). She also co-presents The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry (BBC Radio 4) and The Maths of Life with Lauren Laverne (BBC Radio 6).

Hannah is the author of Hello World, published in 2018.

Hannah will be the keynote speaker on day two of Networkshop49, Wednesday 28 April, at 10:30. See the full Networkshop49 programme.

Ewan Birney

Ewan Birney is the deputy director general of EMBL and director of EMBL-EBI.

Ewan completed his PhD at the Wellcome Sanger Institute with Richard Durbin. In 2000, he became Head of Nucleotide data at EMBL-EBI and in 2012 he took on the role of associate director at the institute. He became director of EMBL-EBI in 2015. In 2020, Ewan became the deputy director general of EMBL. In this role, he assists the EMBL director general in relation to engagement with EMBL member states and external representation. 

Ewan led the analysis of the human genome gene set, mouse and chicken genomes and the ENCODE project, focusing on non-coding elements of the human genome. Ewan’s main areas of research include functional genomics, DNA algorithms, statistical methods to analyse genomic information (in particular information associated with individual differences in humans and Medaka fish) and use of images for chromatin structure.

Ewan is a non-executive director of Genomics England, and a consultant and advisor to a number of companies, including Oxford Nanopore Technologies, Dovetail Genomics and GSK. Ewan was elected an EMBO member in 2012, a fellow of the Royal Society in 2014 and a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015. In 2019, Ewan became a board member of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

He has received a number of awards including the 2003 Francis Crick Award from the Royal Society, the 2005 Overton Prize from the International Society for Computational Biology and the 2005 Benjamin Franklin Award for contributions in Open Source Bioinformatics.

Ewan will be the keynote speaker on day one of Networkshop49, Tuesday 27 April, at 10:30. See the full Networkshop49 programme.

Ahmed Benallegue

Ahmed Benallegue is the networks and security team leader at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

His session will explore the challenges of moving a data centre from the UK (Reading) to Italy (Bologna).

Ahmed will cover the reasons for the move, the challenges of coordinating the delivery of the telecommunications with the availability of the new data centre and the challenges of moving the data. Plus testing the final outcome and how COVID-19 helped/hindered the process.

Ahmed will be the keynote speaker on day three of Networkshop49, Thursday 29 April, at 10:05. See the full Networkshop49 programme.