Simon Shaw: From Machine Tools to Machine Learning

Now Professor of Mathematics at Brunel, Simon Shaw's route to academia and to impactful research is unique...

I hated school, studied A levels at home but didn't take the exams, was apprenticed but the factory went bust, finished night school by doing odd jobs, did Mechanical Engineering but treated it as applied maths, became a designer but the business went bust (again), took an Engineering MSc (yet more applied maths) to become a consultant, but a finite element PhD lured me to Brunel.

I loved the research and still do: the approximation of decay and hysteresis. I did as much teaching as I could, and with the help of some Dead Poets forgot the consultancy ambition and decided that teaching and research was my path. Years spent on theorems and coding in research, and then a major application to heart disease gave it all meaning I had never dreamt of...

Simon is joint Head of Department, but also enjoying the mutual benefits of an industry knowledge transfer partnership. Simon's impactful research using computational mathematics and machine learning as a noninvasive means of screening for coronary artery disease is now being commercially spun out.

"I was apprenticed to be - in archaic terms - a journeyman.... It's been some journey!"

Simon hopes you can join him for a drinks reception after the event.

A livestream option will be available.

This event is part of the Brunel Research Festival,which returns this May for a packed programme of online and in-person activities, celebrating how Brunel's research is changing society for the better. Free and open to all.

Explore the programme:brunel.ac.uk/brf