Professor Zena Wood

About me:

Zena Wood is an Associate Professor in Digital Economy and Director of the Defence Data Research Centre (DDRC). She has been a fellow of the Alan Turing Institute (ATI) since October 2021.

Zena joined the Initiative for the Digital Economy (INDEX) in April 2019 and is based in their offices in South London. Prior to this she was employed by the University of Greenwich as a Senior Lecturer in Spatial Informatics.

Zena’s background is in Computer Science with her research focusing on how techniques from applied ontology and spatiotemporal reasoning can be used to derive value from datasets that would help us understand the impact of digital transformation within the Digital Economy. She is particularly interested in the overlap between methods that can be applied to datasets related to physical and non-physical environments. Most of her research is interdisciplinary involving collaborations with experts from geography, psychology and business.

The research in the physical world focuses on the development of representation, and data analytic, methods to identify and understand collective phenomena (i.e., groups of individuals that we wish to consider as one entity) within spatiotemporal datasets. Zena's most recent research has focused on digital transformation within the financial services sector, particularly those companies moving towards a servitization business model (e.g., a move from a product-based offering to a service- based offering).

Nationality: British

Part of Initiative in the Digital Economy at Exeter (INDEX)

Interests:

• Application of techniques from Geographic Information Science and Applied Ontology within the Digital Economy
• The role of technologies in digital transformation
• Collective analysis
• Movement pattern analysis

Collective analysis involves establishing what is meant by the term ‘collective’ from an ontological point of view and using this to develop techniques that can be used to analyse the phenomenon in more detail. The research focusing on movement pattern analysis focuses on collectives in both physical and virtual spaces.

Qualifications:

BSc Computer Science (Exeter), PhD Computer Science (Exeter), SHEA