§ John ThursoTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement on the previous work experience and knowledge of the Department's Chief Scientific Adviser that is relevant to the position. [164040]
§ Mr. McNultyThe Department for Transport's Chief Scientific Adviser is Professor Frank Kelly, who divides his time between this role and his position as Professor of the Mathematics of Systems at the University of Cambridge. He obtained his doctorate in 1976 from the University of Cambridge, and since then has held positions in the University's Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Mathematics.
Professor Kelly's research interests are in random processes, networks and optimization, and especially in applications to the design and control of networks and the understanding of congestion phenomena. He and colleagues at Cambridge developed, jointly with British Telecom, the routing scheme implemented in BT's main digital telephone network. His current research is directed at understanding methods of self-regulation in large-scale complex networks, which include both transport networks and the communication infrastructures upon which our experiences of transport increasingly depend.
Frank Kelly has received several prizes for his work. In 1989 he was awarded the Guy Medal in Silver of the Royal Statistical Society, and in the same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1992 hew 1076W was awarded the Lanchester Prize of the Operations Research Society of America, he gave the 1995 Clifford Paterson Lecture of the Royal Society, the 1996 Blackett Lecture of the Operational Research Society, and was awarded the 1997 Naylor Prize of the London Mathematical Society. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Heriot-Watt University in 2001.
Professor Kelly served as Director of the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge from 1991 to 1993. He has served on the Scientific Board of Hewlett-Packard's Basic Research Institute in Mathematical Sciences, the Scientific Council of EURANDOM, the Conseil Scientifique of France Telecom, the Council of the Royal Society and the Council of the Royal Statistical Society. He has chaired the Royal Institution/University of Cambridge Mathematics Enrichment Project, and the management committee of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences.
§ John ThursoTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement on the process by which the Department's Chief Scientific Adviser was employed; and if he will publish the application details of the other short-listed candidates. [164041]
§ Mr. McNultyThis was an open competition to recruit a Chief Scientific Adviser at Senior Civil Servant Pay Band 2 level for the Department.
The process was managed and chaired by Alastair Macdonald, the Civil Service Commissioner. The other panel members were Lord Oxburgh, Sir David King, the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser and the previous DfT Permanent Secretary Rachael Lomax and the current Permanent DfT Secretary David Rowlands.
The successful candidate was Professor Frank Kelly who took up post on 1 August 2003. It is not the Department's practice to declare the names of the other short listed candidates, as all applications are made in confidence.