MSSANZASORDORS
22nd National Conference of the Australian Society for Operations Research (ASOR 2013)

DSTO led Defence Operations Research Symposium (DORS 2013)

Plenary Speakers

Professor Graeme Dandy
The University of Adelaide, Australia

The multiple roles of modelling in water resources planning and management

Professor Graeme DandyGraeme Dandy is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Adelaide. He holds Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Melbourne and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA). He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, Australia. He has published widely in the areas of water resources planning and management, optimisation of water supply and distribution systems and the use of neural networks for forecasting water resources variables.

Professor Jerzy Filar
Flinders University, Australia

The power and limitations of mathematical models and Plato’s Cave Parable

Professor Jerzy FilarJerzy Filar is a broadly trained applied mathematician with research interests spanning a wide spectrum of both theoretical and applied topics in Operations Research, Optimisation, Game Theory, Applied Probability and Environmental Modelling. Professor Filar co-authored (with K. Vrieze) a research level text book Competitive Markov Decision Process, published by Springer in 1996. He also authored or co-authored approximately 100 refereed research papers. Professor Filar has an established record of research contracts/agreements with government agencies and research institutes such NSF, ARC, US EPA, World Resources Institute, DSTO and the Sir Keith and Sir Ross Smith Foundation. He is editor-in-chief of Environmental Modelling and Assessment and serves on editorial boards of Operations Research, JMAA and a number of other journals. Professor Filar is a Fellow of the Australian Mathematical Society. He has supervised 18 PhD students who are working at various universities, industries and research institutions across the world.

Associate Professor Hedwig van Delden
Research Institute for Knowledge Systems, The Netherlands

Integrated modelling for policy support: lessons learnt and current challenges

Associate Professor Hedwig van DeldenHedwig van Delden is the director of the Research Institute for Knowledge Systems (RIKS) in Maastricht, the Netherlands and adjunct associate professor at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Her main fields of research are land use modelling, model integration, bridging the science-policy gap and scenario development. Besides her research, she manages and provides scientific leadership to national and international projects of various sizes that focus on the design, development and use of integrated models for policy support. In this capacity she has led among others the European research project LUMOCAP and the development of the DeSurvey Integrated Assessment Model. Her work has been published in several books and journals and widely presented at conferences. She is currently acting as an expert evaluator for the European Green Capital Award, organised by the European Commission.

Dr Jeff Kepert
Bureau of Meteorology, Australia

The science and technology of forecasting severe weather

Dr Jeff KepertJeff Kepert works in the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR) at the Bureau of Meteorology, which undertakes research to improve scientific understanding of, and the ability to forecast, Australia’s climate and weather. Jeff has also worked for the Bureau as a forecaster and as an instructor. Jeff’s research interests include tropical cyclone dynamics, bushfire meteorology, air–sea exchange, boundary layers and turbulence, high-resolution wind prediction and data assimilation. He presently leads the High Impact Weather Research team within CAWCR. Jeff has degrees from the University of Western Australia (pure mathematics and statistics) and Monash University (meteorology).

Dr Maja Schlüter
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden

Embracing change – modeling for resilience thinking and ecosystem stewardship

Dr Maja SchluterMaja Schlüter is a researcher at Stockholm Resilience Centre studying the co-evolution of social-ecological systems (SES) resulting from the interdependencies between actors, institutions and ecosystems. She is particularly interested in how the nature of their interactions affects the resilience and governance of SES. She has worked on water issues in Central Asia and fisheries in Mexico and Germany using empirical and modeling approaches. Maja has a background in ecology and applied system science and has conducted research on SES at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig; Princeton University; and the Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin. She currently holds a starting grant of the European Research Council for modeling social-ecological systems.

Professor Paul Whitehead
University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Adapting to climate change in freshwater ecosystems: multiple modelling approaches to assess processes, dynamics and strategies

Professor Paul WhiteheadPaul has over 35 years’ experience of research on water resource, water quality and pollution issues, and has a special interest in modelling, including the development of dynamic, stochastic and planning models. Model applications include simulation of catchments, rivers, lakes and reservoirs; environmental impact assessment of effluent discharges, land use and climate change, acid deposition and non-point source pollution. Paul has successfully managed 47 projects with funding by NERC, EPSRC, ESRC, EU, EA and a range of Government Departments such as DEFRA, DFID and DTI. Paul is a Professor in the Environmental Change Institute in Oxford University and is the programme director for the NERC Macronutrient Cycles. The NERC programme is a £9 million programme aimed at understanding the interacting cycles of water, nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon in river basins from the mountains or uplands to estuary and coastal systems. Paul has served on several senior Government and NERC committees such as the Thematic Programme Planning committees for the River Ecology Programme (NERC £8 million), Pollution Pathways Programme (NERC £8 million), Land Use Research Programme (NERC £12 million), Joint NERC/ AFRC Agricultural Pollution Programme (£9 million), NERC LOIS Programme (£36 million) and Environmental Diagnostics (NERC £6 million). He has published widely with over 90 papers in the refereed literature as well as being guest speaker at a wide range of conferences and meetings.

Dr Alex Zelinsky
Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Australia

The challenges of modelling and simulation for defence and national security

Dr Alex ZelinskyDr Alex Zelinsky, D.Sc, B.Math (Hons), FIEEE, FTSE, FAICD, FIEA, is Australia’s Chief Defence Scientist and Chief Executive of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. Previously he was Group Executive for Information Sciences at CSIRO. His advisory roles include membership of the Information Technology Industry Innovation Council, the NSW Digital Economy Taskforce, the ARC Centre for Vision Science and the Defence Industry Innovation Board. Dr Zelinsky worked in robotics in Japan and later co-founded Seeing Machines, a high-technology Australian startup company that develops computer vision systems. He has won numerous engineering and science awards including the Clunies-Ross Science & Technology Award and the Eureka Prize. He is an elected fellow of several professional bodies and Vice President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society-Industrial Activities. Dr Zelinsky has been a professor at the Australian National University and the University of Wollongong where he completed his PhD. Named a Technology Pioneer (2003–05) by the World Economic Forum, Dr Zelinsky was Professional Engineer of the Year (Sydney Division) in 2009 and has been included in Engineers Australia’s list of the 100 most influential engineers since that year.

Dr Russell W. Glenn
The Australian National University, Australia

Mission impossible: achieving a comprehensive approach during operations and campaigns

Dr Russell W. GlennDr Russell W. Glenn graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1975 and thereafter served as a US Army officer in the US, Republic of Korea, Germany, United Kingdom, and Southwest Asia during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.  His subsequent career as a security analyst includes work on urban operations and counterinsurgency, to include working with the US, Australian, Canadian, British, and Dutch militaries during development of doctrine in those fields.  Dr Glenn earned his PhD in American history from the University of Kansas with secondary fields of military history and political science. Publications encompass some 50 books and reports along with over 20 articles. He is currently a member of the faculty in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, The Australian National University.