Latest - Area of Interest: Modernising industry

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

Professor Sir Ian Diamond first encountered a computer as a student at the London School of Economics the mid-1970s. He learnt Fortran and submitted programs on punched cards. “But we never actually used computers to analyse data,” he says.

Computers are now crucial to Sir Ian’s role as the UK’s national statistician, and principal adviser to the UK Statistics Authority and the Government. The task involves using the latest AI, machine learning and textual analysis to tackle some of the thorniest current social and economic challenges.

From the beginning, Sir Ian was interested in the application of statistics to social science, demographics and survey data. Statistics have had a bad press, he says, but when they are rigorous and well put together they are increasingly reliable and powerful. For example, they have recently helped discover how the coronavirus is impacting people disproportionately in different ethnic groups.

After an MSc at the LSE, Sir Ian took a PhD at St Andrews, where he received “outstanding supervision” looking at the problem of relatively high drop-out rates among Scottish students compared with their English counterparts.

His career has included being chief executive of the Economic and Social Research Council and vice chancellor of the University of Aberdeen. In 2019, he did not take much persuasion to apply for the post of national statistician.

“It has been a total thrill every day since,” he says. “We need to produce data that the public can trust, and to reflect the economy and society at a time when it is changing very quickly.”

Massive technology change has made it possible to think increasingly radically about all kinds of data, and to produce ever more timely and accurate statistics. But it is really important to have a social theory about what you are doing, says Sir Ian. And to communicate properly, explaining assumptions and ensuring that people can understand the level of uncertainty and margin for error.

For those interested in studying statistics, there can be no better career, he says, and the UK has some of the world’s strongest institutions.

Billy D’Arcy

Billy D’Arcy is Chief Executive Officer for BAI Communications group’s UK operation. A global leader in the design, build and operation of communications networks on transport systems, BAI is installing a network-neutral telecoms infrastructure in the London Underground so that mobile users can get the service from whatever network operator they choose. This decades long project involves investment in excess of £1Bn upgrading the technology into 6G and beyond, as well as providing above ground infrastructure for emergency services, traffic management and Wi-Fi.

Billy has spent 30 years in the telecommunications industry at Cable and Wireless in Ireland, O2 and faced keeping his customers served when WorldCom was in Chapter 11. He shares his views on Ireland, building business enterprises, treating people right and what makes a great shareholder.

Rory Cellan-Jones

Rory Cellan-Jones provides a sharp, insightful view of the Tech in the Internet age.  He was a reporter for the BBC for 30 years, initially covering business, which got him interested in the burgeoning business of IT in the 90s.  As the industry developed he met the key players from Bill Gates to and Elon Musk and Steve Jobs and recalls the launch of the iPhone as a masterpiece of PR theatre. He chronicled  the rise and burst of the .com bubble in the UK in his book dot.bomb. 

Now retired from the BBC he has reflected on the exciting and dangerous world of what he calls “the social smartphone era” in his contribution to the archive and in his new book Always On. One of his biggest mistakes, he says, was getting excited about Google Glass, which did not look cool.

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Richard Hooper

Richard Hooper studied Russian and German at Oxford and then joined the BBC. His passion for media technology was inspired when, as a Harkness scholar, he spent 21 months in the US looking at innovative educational technology projects.

“I learnt in America,” he says, such wonderful quips as: “Technology is the answer – but…what was the question?  That still resonates firmly today.” He also likes to quote the axiom coined by Marshall McLuhan, one of his heroes: “The medium is the message”.

Richard took on his first senior role in the UK IT industry in 1973 as Director of the National Development Programme in Computer Assisted Learning.

At BT during the early 1980s, he helped pioneer Prestel, the first version of the internet.  He also ran Yellow Pages when it was a FTSE100 company, and oversaw start-ups such as Telecom Gold, the UK’s first public email service.

In 1987, as managing director of Super Channel, the ITV- and BBC-backed pan-European satellite channel, Margaret Thatcher asked him to give the introductory presentation at a Downing St seminar on broadcasting policy.

His wide-ranging career in communications also includes being founding deputy chairman of Ofcom, chairman of the Broadband Stakeholder Group and numerous advisory and consultancy roles. He has just published a book on the art of chairing called Making Meetings Work.

Tony Storey

Tony Storey is a computer scientist who reluctantly accepts the job description “Software Engineer” and has been responsible for some of the most important software developments of the last 50 years, including the ubiquitous CICS, Java and the message-based system, MQ Series.

He started using computers for his work as an experimental chemist, migrated to realtime systems for Ferranti naval weapons and thence to IBM UK’s scientific centre where he helped develop a pioneering relational database system used by the World Health Organisation, among others. He moved on to Hursley and achieved the accolade of IBM Fellow.

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Jeremy Brassington

The early experience of rejection gave Jeremy Brassington a drive which led through impressive exam results to studying chemistry at Oxford. Despite a well-received thesis on blood proteins, he found academic research unappealing, and instead qualified as an accountant.   Describing auditing as “the dullest subject on earth” he turned to banking, eventually focusing on tech venture funding and turning around failing businesses such as Oxford Molecular. “It taught me how not to run a business,” he says.

In 2003, Jeremy moved into Assistive Technology, redesigning an assistive listening device for the hard of hearing. Having had learning difficulties himself, he realised could help students with dyslexia, language problems and other disabilities.  “It was the first time I had run a business that was doing good,” he says. He managed it for the next 15 years, launching in 30 markets worldwide.

In 2019, Jeremy founded Habitat Learn, an Edtech group which combines automated note-taking and transcription with a smartphone app that helps disabled students take notes in lectures and is now pioneering digital education for all students. He hopes it will become a unicorn.

Professor Bill Dutton

Professor Bill Dutton is an eminent authority on the role and impact of information and communications technology in society. He was the first Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, founded in 2001, with support from Dame Stephanie Shirley, to focus on the societal opportunities and challenges of the rapidly developing technology.

His graduate studies were in Political Science, since when Bill has held roles with many institutions, notably at the University of Southern California and at Oxford with Balliol College and the Oxford Martin School. Bill was also Professor of Media and Information Policy at the Quello Center and Professor at the Annenberg School for Communications.

He combines expertise in ICT and human behaviour to illuminate the interplay of technology with issues such as security, democracy, (dis)information and response to the pandemic.