BGS Senior Leadership Team
Prof. John Ludden — Executive Director
Before taking the post of Executive Director at the BGS, John was Director of the Earth Sciences Division at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). He has also served as Director of Research for the CNRS in Nancy, France, where he also taught at the French National School of Geology (ENSG-Nancy). Prior to this, Professor Ludden worked at the University of Montreal, Columbia University and with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the USA. He holds a doctorate in Igneous Petrology from the University of Manchester, UK. Professor Ludden is currently Past-President of the European Geosciences Union and a visiting professor at Oxford and Leicester universities.
Prof. Denis Peach — Chief Scientist
Before his appointment as Chief Scientist, Denis spent over nine years as the Manager of the BGS Groundwater Programme, based at Wallingford. He is a hydrogeologist with very broad interests in the area of environment geoscience, including shallow geophysics, hydrogeochemistry, engineering geology and numerical modelling. He has 35 years' experience which includes work for a UK water authority, overseas work in tropical hydrogeological environments and work for international consultants in arid zone hydrogeology. His particular scientific interests have included the development of groundwater modelling in BGS. Denis has a track record of collaborating with several universities and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology across the disciplines in integrated catchment science. He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham and has been a Vice President of the Geological Society of London.
Dr Mike Patterson — Director of Corporate Strategy
Dr Mike Patterson joined BGS as Director of Corporate Strategy on 1 April 2011. Mike comes with a variety of skills in business and operations at a senior level and at the same time understands the environmental sciences sector through his involvement with Golder Associates.
After graduating from Nottingham University, Mike took a research post at Loughborough University and obtained a Ph.D. in environmental radiochemistry. He joined Golder Associates in 1994 as a consultant and after 6 years working with very bright, technically minded scientists and engineers on a variety of projects, he left to pursue a more aggressive sales role with Willis, the global insurance intermediary based in the City, working as an insurance broker and specialising in selling risk financing tools to both the private and public sector.
Mike rejoined Golder Associates in 2003 as their first Commercial Manager, with a remit to increase sales capabilities across the company and specifically grow revenues. Over the following 7 years he held a variety of commercial and operations roles including Global sector leader for land development, Golders' third largest business with £60 million plus in revenues. He was also a UK Board Director with responsibility for the day-to-day running of a 350-man group of companies, including implementation of the business strategy, cost management, and improving business efficiency whilst maintaining profit and adding stakeholder value.
Dr Andy Howard — Director of Geoscience Survey and Monitoring
From 2001, Andy managed the SIGMA project, to develop and deploy digital mapping systems in BGS survey programmes. Since 2005, he has managed the National Geoscience Framework, a programme to implement a national, digital 3D knowledge base of the United Kingdom. Andy joined BGS with a PhD in Jurassic sedimentology and palaeobiology in 1984, after working for Norsk Hydro in Bergen and Stavanger. He has specialised in urban environmental geology and coalfields, working on mapping projects in the Midlands and northern England. He was District Geologist in the East Midlands from 1991 to 95 and Lancashire from 1997 to 2001, and from 1993 to 2000 was Secretary of the IUGS International Working Group on Urban Geology. Andy was the first Secretary of the BGS Programme Board from 1989 to 91, and rejoined the BGS Central Directorate in 1996 to manage the BGS contribuion to the Government's Prior Options Review of the governance of all the UK's research establishments.
Dr David Kerridge — Director of Geoscience Research
David was appointed Director of Geoscience Research on 1 April 2011 after three years as Head of the Earth Hazards and Systems science theme with responsibility for the Earthquake Seismology, Geomagnetism and Volcanology teams. In that role he advised the Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies Secretariat on geohazards to inform the National Risk Assessment and worked with the UK Met Office and other agencies to establish the Natural Hazards Partnership and the Space Environment Impacts Expert Group.
David joined BGS with a PhD in geomagnetism and initially worked on global geomagnetic field modelling, including the International Geomagnetic Reference Field. He led projects commissioned by the European Space Agency on space weather forecasting and developed new methods for surveying wellbores with application to directional drilling, leading to a joint patent with Halliburton and a financially successful alliance agreement. He had management responsibility for the Edinburgh Anisotropy Project for 10 years from 1997 and in 2005 he led a multi-agency study commissioned by the UK Government on the tsunami threat to the UK.
David has served the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy in a number of capacities, including President from 1999-2003. He is a member of the Executive Council of INTERMAGNET, the body co-ordinating the global magnetic observatory network. In 2009 he was given the Royal Astronomical Society's award for services to geophysics and received an MBE in the 2010 New Year Honours list.
Prof Randy Parrish — Director of Science Facilities
Randy has juggled scientific and managerial leadership for the past 25 years, first in Canada with the Geological Survey of Canada, and since 1996 in the UK as Professor of Isotope Geology at the University of Leicester and as Head of NERC's Isotope Geoscience Laboratory at the BGS. Since April 2011 he has also been Director of Science Facilities in the current Senior Leadership Team of BGS where he leads the efforts to coordinate environmental tracer and physical properties national facilities.
While being committed to excellent scientific facilities, he has also been dedicated to innovative collaborative research in isotope geo- and environmental science with a strong focus on PhD and Post-Doctoral training, and this continues. His active research interests involve the Eastern Himalaya – erosion and tectonics, the environmental health impacts of depleted uranium and lead pollution of inhalable particulates, provenance of Chinese Loess, new methods in geochronology, and links between Plio-Pleistocene climate change, Northern Hemisphere Glaciation, and the rise and erosion of mountains of northwest North America. He teaches field geology at the University of Leicester in the Scottish Highlands and Swiss Alps, and was awarded the Murchison and Schlumberger medals in 2010. He holds a doctorate from the University of British Columbia.
Dr Richard Hughes — Director of Geoscience Information & Knowledge Exchange
Richard was appointed Director of Geoscience Information and Knowledge Exchange in November 2007. Richard's background is in geosciences: he holds a BSc from the University of Wales, Cardiff, and a PhD in Earth Sciences from the University of Cambridge. The early parts of his BGS career were spent working on regional geoscience survey projects in various parts of England, Wales and Scotland. He has also lived and worked in the Ecuadorian Andes, and in Canada. Between 2001 and 2005 Richard worked on geoscience project development and management in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa. He is a Chartered Geologist, a Geological Society of London Council Member, member of the UK Location Council, member of the Environmental Science to Service Steering Group, chairs the Geological Society's Information Management Committee, member of the Geoscience Information Consortium Steering Group and convenor of the International Geological Congress 2012 (Brisbane) Information super-sessions.
John Murray — Director of Resources & Operations
John rejoined BGS as Director of Administration in 2008. He has undertaken a number of NERC-wide corporate roles in recent years including chairing the Engineering and Technical Merit Promotion Panel and as Senior Responsible Officer for the NERC Resource Management Software project in Swindon, POL and CEH. John began his NERC career in Keyworth in 1981 working initially in the Personnel group assisting staff transferring in from sites in London and Leeds. He left BGS in 1988 and has worked within the NERC marine science community, firstly as Head of Finance at the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences Deacon Laboratory in Surrey and subsequently at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory on Merseyside and the Dunstaffnage Marine Laboratory near Oban (now SAMS). In 1995 John transferred to POL as Head of Administration and combined this with an administrative Directorate role within the NERC Centre for Coastal and Marine Sciences. During 2002-04, John was a project manager for the relocation of POL from the Wirral to a new building on the University of Liverpool campus.
