Contact Details


Dr. Richard Howey
Catalyst Building
Newcastle University
3 Science Square
Newcastle Helix
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE4 5TG
United Kingdom

Email: richard.howey@ncl.ac.uk

About me


I completed my PhD at Newcastle University in Pure Mathematics working with Prof. Barry Johnson in the field of functional analysis. Briefly working in the software industry as a programmer/analyst, I then worked in the field of Artificial Intelligence Planning with Prof. Derek Long and Prof. Maria Fox at Durham and Strathclyde Universities. I developed extensions to the planning modelling language PDDL (Planning Domain Description Language) and implemented these changes in the plan validation tool, VAL, which is used extensively by the research community to develop new planning methodology, applications and to validate plans in the International Planning Competitions. I further developed my modelling skills working as a mathematical/computational modeller in the field of Epidemiology working with Prof. Mark Woolhouse at Edinburgh University. The focus of my work was on a project to investigate the spread and transmission of the foot-and-mouth disease virus. This included fitting differential equation models to experimental data using search algorithms, maximum likelihood analysis, and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. The project produced a paper published in Science magazine.