Chief Analyst, 10 Downing Street
Dr. Laura Gilbert is the director of 10DS, a data science and analytics team providing modelling and analysis and promoting evidence-based research within the UK government.
Laura has a doctorate in Particle Physics and GRID computing from the university of Oxford, and undergraduate degrees in natural sciences from Cambridge. She held numerous lectureships and a post-doctoral research position at Oxford, and she is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.
Prior to her doctorate she worked in defence intelligence within the MOD. Following particle physics, Laura spent four years as a financial analyst within a range of hedge funds, working in modelling, analysis and artificial intelligence. Laura has spent the last decade working as a hands-on CTO in medical technologies, bringing a company from start up to SME to acquisition, and has significant experience in software development, wearable technology, systems architecture, data integration and system/data security.
She is fluent in seven programming languages. As part of this role she also performed scientific consultancy, completing diverse projects including creating an algorithm to detect heart rhythm anomalies on minute timescales by measuring patients’ thumbs; providing analytic tools to biologists trying to disrupt the cell cycle of the malaria parasite; providing predictive algorithms based around measuring biomechanics and mental health measures to alert COs when a soldier in training was likely to become seriously injured in the short term, and predicting the behaviour of groups of snipers.