Ray Butler - EuSpRIG Founder

Ray Butler worked as an IS auditor for the UK Tax authorities for almost 30 years, during which time he trained tax inspectors in Information Systems audit and spreadsheet testing and was a member of the team that developed the SpACE spreadsheet testing methodology and software tool. He is a founding member and past chair of the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group (EuSpRIG) and past president of ISACA's Northern England Chapter. He has written and spoken about IS and Spreadsheet auditing in UK and international publications and conferences. He is currently Head of Information Policy and Security at the UK Highways Agency. He is a Certified Information Systems Auditor
(CISA) and a Fellow of the Institute of Risk Management.

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David R Chadwick - EuSpRIG Founder

David R. Chadwick, EuSpRIG founder member, presenting Alan Rust and Brian Bishop with the 2006 Student Prize. Alan and Brian delivered an excellent paper on their work concerning software for the testing of spreadsheet formulae.

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Pat Cleary - EuSpRIG Founder & EuSpRIG 2010 Organising Chair

Pat had 30 years industrial experience mainly in supply chain and ICT related roles before entering academia at University of Wales Institute Cardiff (UWIC) as a senior lecturer in Information Systems. His research interests are:

• information systems development methodologies
• E-Commerce particularly in developing countries
• the management of the risks associated with the use of spreadsheets

He supervises research students in all three areas and is a founder member of EuSpRIG.

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Grenville J Croll

Grenville J. Croll is a specialist in spreadsheets, spreadsheet applications and spreadsheet risk research. He has extensive experience in business management and has consulted in the areas of risk management, monte carlo simulation, project management, financial modelling, financial forecasting and food process optimisation. He is the present chairman of EuSpRIG, the spreadsheet risks research organisation. He is a member of the British Computer Society and is a Chartered Engineer. His recent work in Software Engineering, Theoretical Physics and Cryptography is published on www.arxiv.org, Cornell University’s moderated scientific repository.

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Patrick R O’Beirne – EuSpRIG Chairman

Patrick has 40 years of professional experience, 25 of them in his own company Systems Modelling Ltd. in Ireland. His current focus is on spreadsheet quality assessment and training. He is the author of 'Spreadsheet Check and Control', ISBN 190540400X, and software tools.

He is a Fellow of the Irish Computer Society; was the chair 2004-2007 of the European Spreadsheet Risk Interest Group (EuSpRIG), and the chair of the Software Testing Interest Group in Ireland (SoftTest).

He has extensive experience in general IT consultancy, systems selection, and software maintenance for businesses.

David Colver - EuSpRIG Treasurer

David Colver is Joint Chief Executive of Operis, a London-based firm engaged in various activities involving financial modelling.

Previously he worked for Strategic Planning Associates, a Washington-based strategic management consultancy that is now part of Oliver Wyman, and before that spent eight years in the corporate finance department of N M Rothschild, specialising initially in the analysis of major projects in the natural resources sector, turning later to the privatisations on which that bank was a prominent adviser.

David holds a degree in Computer Science from Christ’s College, Cambridge. He has also completed the Corporate Finance Programme of the London Business School, and the Owner-President Management Programme of the Harvard Business School.

Angela Collins - EuSpRIG Secretary

Angela is a Corporate Finance Manager at BDO. She has a wide range of financial modelling experience gained both in practice and industry. She has particular expertise in building and reviewing complex valuation and PFI/Infrastructure models. Angela works closely with a large team of non-modellers and is especially interested in improving the modelling skills of non-technicians.

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Kevin McDaid

Dr Kevin McDaid is a lecturer in Computing at Dundalk Institute of Technology in Ireland and a leading member of the Software Technology Research Centre. His background is in Mathematics and Statistics with a PhD from Trinity College, Dublin. His current research focuses on the investigation, development and evaluation of new methods and tools to improve the quality of spreadsheets. He has published widely and has raised substantial funds to support his research team. He has also consulted extensively with industry, applying mathematical methods to problems such as when to stop testing software, how to set and control the level of spare inventory in the airline industry and how to optimise the selection of potential customers in the construction industry. In the past Kevin worked as an economic statistician with the Central Statistics Office in Ireland. Further information on Kevin's spreadsheet research can be found at here...

Françoise Tort

Françoise Tort is a senior lecturer at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, one of the major French « Grandes Écoles ». She graduated in economics and management and holds a Ph.D in Knowledge Engineering (Computer Science). Since 1997, she has taught information systems and computing to students enrolled in economics and management studies.

Françoise is a member of the STEF - Sciences, Training and Teaching - research team. Her research interests are in didactics of informatics with a special emphasis on the teaching of general software applications including spreadsheets.

Since the beginning of the Didatab project [link to : http://www.stef.ens-cachan.fr/didatab/en/index.html]  - Teaching and Learning Spreadsheets-,
she has developed methods for collecting and analyzing data in order to assess the skills of software users, especially using screen capture analysis and digital pens. She has published in international conferences including IFIP, ISSEP and EuSpRIG.

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A youthful Simon Thorne accepting the 2004 David Chadwick prize from Ray Butler in 2004 at Magdelsberg, Austria. Professor Roland Mittermeir looks on from the left.

Angus Dunn

Angus is a retired project banker. He joined Operis in 1999 to develop a PFI advisory business, and became Chairman in 2005. He practised with Morgan Grenfell, Manufacturers Hanover, as head of the Group Private Finance Unit at Tarmac, and at DoE, KPMG and Operis, and as an independent. He participated in PFI projects in transport, health, education, prisons, environmental and archiving. He advised transport, education and police authorities. At DoE in 1996, he participated in letting the franchise for DLR. As a Diplomat till 1972, he served in London, Kuala Lumpur and Bonn.

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Bill Bekenn

Joined the Post Office as an Executive Engineer in 1972; involved in early research into Stored Program Control of Telephone Exchanges. This involved learning to program early mini computers in assembly code and gave him an appreciation of the importance of structured design in programming. He then helped develop test kit for System X and in the mid 90’s moved on to cost studies using Excel. The cost modelling became ever more complex and he learnt to program in VBA to manage the models. After leaving BT in 2007 this combination of programming skills and a comprehensive knowledge of Excel, enabled Fairway Associates Ltd, of which he is a Director, to develop FormulaDataSleuth®.

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Tie Cheng

Tie Cheng holds a first class Master 1’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of Paris 6, and a Master’s Degree in Science and Executive Engineering from Mines Paristech, where his major was Management of Information Systems.

After graduation, he joined Total in Belgium as SAP process expert where he supervised the evolution and implementation of SAP in sales offices, plants and subsidiaries. He then moved to the UK and joined UBS Investment Bank as a quantitative analyst. His job involved various applications developed in different languages. As a result he has a particular sensibility about how different technologies are chosen and applied in the industry. Tie Cheng is also an advanced Excel/VBA developer. He moved back to France in September 2009, and now works as a design engineer in Softeam, a firm specialising in object technologies and software components. Tie Cheng’s current research interests cover array formulas used in spreadsheets, functional programming and object-oriented programming.

Tie Cheng joined the EuSpRIG Committee in September 2009. His ambitions are to bring more diversity to the group, to promote spreadsheet risk awareness, good practices and related industrial & academic research.

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