Gareth Burns Email & Phone Number

Belfast, Gb

Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Crossnacreevy, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Project Leader for Plant Breeders Rights• Managed a national statutory testing program (c.600 k per annum) to collect complex biological timeseries and weather data (c. 4 million datapoints collected per annum).• Developed a strategy to modernise dated data collection and storage systems using novel technology and cutting edge techniques.• Technical expert on multiple national and international committees covering policy, governance, and emerging technologies.Work Package Leader for Synergies and Future Development• Organised an annual Stakeholder Forum.• Dissemination of Stakeholder feedback to ensure implementation of requirements of policy, scientific and farming communities. • Research into novel technologies and developed a roadmap for implementation of their use in national evaluation and research programmes. • Assessment of novel technologies and techniques in field research programmes.Deputy Work Package Leader for Impact – Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation• Senior Member of Website Committee (https://www.h2020innovar.eu/)• Responsible for 4 social media accounts and achieved KPIs for by 30 – 75% • Author of bi-annual Newsletters disseminating complex scientific and technical to a broad audience.Data Protection Officer for InnoVar • Ensuring a 21 partner H2020 funder project (InnoVar) project meets requirements under GDPR legislation.• Author all Data Governance documentation and policies (e.g. Data Management Plan, Data Protection Impact Assessments).• Provided advice and carried out internal processes.Chair of Phenomics Working Group

Belfast, United Kingdom

Developing a cutting-edge clinical trial simulation engine to commercialise to clients as 'software as a service'. I am responsible for the simulation engine and subsequent analysis of virtual patient population data using R programming language. Best practise in Continuous Integration pipelines (TravisCI, CircleCI) ensuring code is modularised and documented as a package that meets all build tests required for the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). I have written automated unit tests for each function and assess code coverage using covr. All code is deployed on GitHub as a version repository system.

New Forge Lane

Database co-ordinator (SQL and MS Access) for Northern Ireland commercial fisheries data for the purposes of reporting to international stock assessment programmes. Duties include:• Coordination, collation and analysis of fisheries-independent and fisheries dependent data and meta-data from multiple sources.• Delivery of specialist advice to international technical and scientific committees.• Automation of analysis and reports (R Markdown) ensuring reproducible research.• Bespoke marine spatial analysis (ArcGIS). Delivery of in-house training regime in Data Science to junior members of staff to ensure they have the skills and toolsets to required to meet the business requirements of the branch.

Loughgall, Northern Ireland

Project leader and data analyst on a strategic forage grass breeding programme for the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and commercial forage grass breeding programme with an international partner Barenbrug.Main roles included:• Coordination of Business Information System (BIS) for Crops, Grassland & Ecology branch which included 100+ staff and multi-million pound budget for strategic planning of work programmes.• Implementation of novel techniques and procedures into the grass breeding programme including on-board NIRS, genomic techniques and remote electronic recording of field data. • Development of a bespoke economic index to evaluate the financial value of grass varieties for Irish production systems.• Co-ordinator of the Crops, Grassland and Ecology branch Peer-Review process whereby an independent body evaluated the previous 5 years of the branch. Included collating academic, financial, branch structure and vision documents for appraisal.

Stormount, Belfast

Co-ordintation of ecological survey covering 200 km squared. Developed and maintaining database for efficient survey findings from multiple data sources.Liasing with stakeholders to ensure efficient project implementation.Producing geo-spatial reports of survey data for multiple stakeholders using ArcGIS.Designing and implementing bio-security and privacy protocols for field based staff.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Provide specialist technical and scientific knowledge on herbage and maize crops regarding the Recommended and National list trialling systems. Inspection of official trial and growing sites and provide regular updates.Knowledge transfer of recent research in forage production systems.Contributor for the Advanced Training Partnership for Sustainable and Efficient Food Production providing online lecturing, reading material and support for students.

Co. Meath, Ireland

Carried out research project in which I developed NIRS as a technique for assessing the nutritive quality of grass for a national variety evaluation scheme. Other aspects of the project included assessing the ensilabilty and nutritive quality of grass species and varieties. The design of a statistical protocol for the gather of information to ensure maintain statistical accuracy whilst optimizing the use of resources.

Quantitative evaluation of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) varieties for yield and persistency.Sub-sampling of grass samples according to a set protocol for dry matter and nutritive analysis.Botanical separation of grass-legume mixtures.Classification of major grass species using identification key.

Population census of European badger (Meles meles) in Northern Ireland using field signals.Use of GPS equipment and 1km2 maps to accurately record location of badger activity.Ensured bio-security protocols maintained to minimize contamination risk.Maintenance and use of suitable weather gear ensuring work continued in all environmental conditions.

Sampled populations of plankton at open sea.Studied literature on local marine communities.Collaborated with international partners establishing a network.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Agronomy And Crop Science

Variation in the nutritive quality of Lolium as assessed by Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy

B.Sc. Honours, Environmental Biology