Vincent Knight
SSI fellow
School of Mathematics, Cardiff University
Interests
I am interested in stochastic processes and queueing theory. Some particular interests include applications to real life situations such as healthcare but also the iterated prisoner's dilemma.
Research
I am part of a research group at Cardiff that applies particular mathematical techniques to real world problems (this is called Operational Research). Some examples of the work I have done include modelling game theoretic choice of hospitals by patients and also modelling the queue for ambulance services.
I mainly use Python for my modelling work, taking advantage of the fact that it's an object oriented language, to be able to quickly write agent based models of interaction. I then use these models to:
1. Run "what if" scenarios (for example, helping hospital managers answer questions like: "what would happen if I moved some beds from this ward to that ward?").
2. Validate analytical results for theoretical purposes and/or to run similar "what if" scenarios at a lower computational cost.
Another area of my research revolves around the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma.
This follows a 1980s computer tournament run by Axelrod. I am one of the core developers of the Axelrod python package which aims to make research in this area easier and importantly reproducible.
Online Presence
Check out contributions by and mentions of Vincent Knight on www.software.ac.uk