Director of Risk Information Management Research Group
(formerly RADAR: Risk Assessment and Decision Analysis Research Group)
School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science
Queen Mary University of London
London E1 4NS.
n.fenton@qmul.ac.uk
http://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/
Tel +44 20 7882 7860

Norman Fenton is Professor of Risk Information Management at Queen Mary London University and is also Chief Executive Officer of Agena, a company that specialises in risk management for critical systems.  Norman, who is a mathematician by training, works on quantitative risk assessment. This typically involves analysing and predicting the probabilities of unknown events using Bayesian statistical methods including especially causal, probabilistic models (Bayesian networks). This type of reasoning enables improved assessment by taking account of both statistical data and also expert judgment.  In September 2013 Norman was a awarded one of the prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grants to focus on these issues (project starts Feb 2014 and is for 4 years) . Norman's experience in risk assessment covers a wide range of application domains such as legal reasoning (he has been an expert witness in major criminal and civil cases), medical trials, vehicle reliability, embedded software, transport systems, financial services, and football prediction. Norman has a special interest in raising public awareness of the importance of probability theory and Bayesian reasoning in everyday life (including how to present such reasoning in simple lay terms) and he maintains a  website dedicated to this and also a blog focusing on probability and the law. Norman has published 6 books and over 120 referred articles and has provided consulting to many major companies world-wide. His current projects are focused on using Bayesian methods for improved legal reasoning and improved medical decision making. Since June 2011 he has led an international consortium (Bayes and the Law) of statisticians, lawyers and forensic scientists working to improve the use of statistics in court. His latest book is the first to bring Bayesian networks to a general audience.  In addition to his research on risk assessment, Norman is  renowned  for his work in software engineering (including pioneering work on software metrics); his book “Software Metrics: A Practical and Rigorous Approach” has sold over 35,000 copies worldwide.  

Norman is an Affiliated Professor to the University of Haifa, Israel. He has held previous academic posts at City University (Professor in Centre for Software Reliability), South Bank (Director of Centre for Systems and Software Engineering), Oxford University and University College Dublin (both as Research Fellow) and was a visiting researcher at GMD in Germany. Norman is  a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered Mathematician and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Software Quality Journal. Norman is married to Naomi and has two daughters Nicole and Hannah.

3 minute video overview of Prof Fenton's research group	7 minute video introducing the role of Bayesian methods