Dr Vincent Knight

Overview

Position: Research Associate Email: KnightVA@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone: +44(0)29 2087 5548
Fax: +44(0)29 2087 4199
Extension: 75548
Location: M/1.30

Research Interests

Game Theory
Queueing Theory and Simulation
Healthcare Modelling

My main research interests are in the understanding and design of queueing systems, where individual behaviour is a factor. Recent changes in the UK health system have provided an excellent opportunity for the application of my theoretical developments that merge queueing theory and game theory. Additionally, I also have interests in using simulation taking into account the behaviour of the agents being modelled.

My other research interests lie mainly in healthcare modelling and include:

Optimisation of staffing levels in systems with time-variable demand.
Location theory problems; aiming to locate healthcare facilities (mobile or fixed).
General healthcare problems, with the possibility for strong theoretical approaches.

I have worked closely with healthcare personnel and translated theory in to practice though modeling of different aspects of the healthcare system, such as emergency units, ambulance service and social care.

Publications

Behrend RE and Knight VA (2008):Higher Spin Alternating Sign Matrices. Electron. J. Combin. 14(1), R83, 38pp.

Knight VA, Williams JE and Reynolds I (2010): Modelling Patient Choice in Healthcare Systems: Development and Application of a Discrete Event Simulation with Agent-Based Functionality. (Accepted for publication in the Journal of Simulation).

Harper PR, Knight VA and Marshall A (2010): Discrete Conditional Phase-type Models Utilising Classification Trees: Application to Modelling Health Service Capacities. (Accepted for publication in the European Journal of Operational Research).

Williams J, Gillard J, Harper PR and Knight VA (2010): Forecasting Welsh Ambulance Demand Using Singular Spectrum Analysis. (Submitted to Journal of the Operational Research Society)

Harper PR, Kleinman ER, Gallagher JE and Knight VA: Cost-effective Workforce Planning: Optimising the Dental Team Skill-mix for England. 2010. (Submitted)

Knight VA, Harper PR and Smith L (2010): Ambulance Allocation for Maximal Survival with Heterogeneous Outcome Measures.(Revision submitted to OMEGA - The International Journal of Management Science).

Knight VA and Harper PR (2010): The Price of Anarchy in Health Care. (Submitted to Operations Research).

Griffiths J, Knight VA, Komenda I (2010): Bed Management in a Critical Care Unit. (Submitted to IMA Journal of Management Mathematics)

Knight VA, Voake C, Williams JE, Griffiths J and Nelson AV (2010): How efficient can an Emergency Unit be? A Perfect World Model. (Submitted to Emergency Medicine Journal).

Knight VA: On a Polytope Containing the Transportation Polytope. (In preparation to submit to the Journal of the Operational Research Society)

Knight VA and Harper PR (2011): Modelling Emergency Medical Services with Phase
Type Distributions. (In preparation to submit to the European Journal of Operational Research)

Knight VA and Gillard J (2011): Using Singular Spectrum Analysis to Obtain Staffing Level Requirements in Healthcare. (Submitted to the European Journal of Operational Research)

Gillard J, Knight VA, Williams J and Wilson R, (2011): Staffing Levels of a Maths Support Centre. (In preperation)

Conference Presentations

Speaker at the Operational Research Society conference:

OR 52 (September 2009)

OR 51 (September 2010)

Speaker at the European Working Group on OR Applied to Health Services (ORAHS) annual conference:

ORAHS 2010 (July 2010)

Research

Research Material

Euler Time Dependent Staffing Algorithm (26 kb)

Postgraduate Students

Current

Robert Shone - Hybrid Game Theory and Queueing System Modelling

Biography

Qualifications

BSc – Cardiff University (First Class Honors, 2005)
PhD Thesis – "Alternating Sign Matrices and Polytopes" (2009)

Positions Held

(2009-Present) - LANCS post-doctoral research associate.