I am Professor of Mathematical Modelling at the University of Sunderland. We were the first polytechnic to run Mathematical Modelling courses starting in 1979. We also founded POLYMODEL which was a consortium of the three Northeastern polytechnics and local industry including Parsons, Reyrolles, British Ship and ICI.
POLYMODEL ran an annual conference for 17 years which concentrated on the practical application of mathematics and simulation to industrial
problems.
During the 80s, my attention was attracted by Systems Thinking and I became interested in System Dynamics as a modelling tool. I have continued this interest and am now one of the vice-presidents of the UK chapter for the Systems Dynamics Society. I have published extensively in System Dynamics especially as a tool for economic
modelling.
During the 90s I became interested in Cybernetics and Non-linear Dynamics. I had the pleasure of meeting Stafford about six years ago and we became firm friends. Stafford became an honorary professor at Sunderland (sponsored by BT) and I arranged for Stafford to be awarded his Doctor of Science from Sunderland. This is Stafford's only non-honorary qualification and he was extremely proud of
it.
My recent interests are now Cybernetics, Self emerging Systems (Prigogine) Chaos Theory and Intelligent
Systems. I have ran three simultaneous Syntegrities in Istanbul for a world conference for environmental students and it was very successful.
