Tim Bedford

In collaboration with the Principal and Professors Kerr and Uttamchandani, Professor Bedford leads activity in Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise.

Professor Bedford leads the Research and Innovation portfolio in the University Executive Team, working in close collaboration with the Principal and Deputy Associate Principals Professors Hamill, Kerr and McArthur.

Professor Bedford has two roles at the University: He leads the Research and Innovation portfolio within the university, with a particular focus on the Innovation aspects, working closely with other senior colleagues each of whom has specific responsibilities within R&I; He is also Professor of Decision and Risk Analysis within the Management Science Department of the Business School.

Key responsibilities within the Associate Principal role are: representing the R&I interests of the University in discussions with Government and other public bodies such as research and innovation funders; convening the University Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee and, with colleagues, developing university strategy in research and innovation; providing leadership to cross-faculty initiatives such as the Technology and Innovation Centre and the University Strategic Themes; engaging with external university research partners in business and government; leading the University involvement in the Association of European Technological Universities, CESAER, and, convening the University Enterprise Forum. He led the development of the University Strategy for Innovation, and is currently leading work around the vision as a Leading International Technological University. In addition he is one of the key figures in the Glasgow Science and Innovation Audit.

Professor Bedford is currently a member of the Scottish Funding Council Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a member of its Business Innovation Forum. In 2016 he was on the advisory board of the Reid Review of Scottish Innovation Centres.

In his role as Professor of Decision and Risk Analysis, Professor Bedford continues to teach, supervise PhDs and conduct research in probabilistic risk analysis, uncertainty modelling, reliability and maintenance modelling, structured expert judgement and decision analysis.

He studied mathematics at Warwick University where he obtained BSc, M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees. He holds an Honorary Doctorate in recognition of his work in risk analysis, from the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons, and has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s National Academy. He held a fellowship at King's College Cambridge where he was a member of the King's College Research Centre project on Chaotic Dynamics. He then took a lectureship in applied probability at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and later became Senior Lecturer in Applications of Decision Theory in the same department.

Prof Bedford has been active in various professional societies, amongst others the European Safety and Reliability Association and the Dutch Reliability Society, of which he was Chair. He has been Chair of the Committee of Professors of Operational Research, the network of UK OR Professors and was a member of the Board of Directors of the European Safety Reliability and Data Association ESReDA. He has been elected a Fellow of the UK Safety and Reliability Society and of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications. He was a member of the EPSRC Mathematics Programme Strategic Advisory Panel. He has carried out research and consultancy projects for a range of companies including Aveco, ESTEC, MoD, DSTL, Railway Safety, Magnox, Netherlands Ministry for Water Management, Philips, Scottish Power, SSE. He was awarded the Donald Julius Groen prize for 2009 by the IMechE Safety and Reliability Group, and in 2013 was awarded the Lloyds Risk Prize for work on Societal Risk. He was co-chair of the EURO2015 Conference - the major European conference on Operational Research in 2015, and also co-chair of the ESREL2016 Conference – the major European conference on Safety and Reliability.