Alan Wilson is Professor of Urban and Regional Systems in the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London and is Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds from 1991 to 2004, and Director-General for Higher Education in DfES from 2004-2006. He was elected as a Member of Academia Europaea in 1991, a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994, an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2000, and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006. He was knighted for services to higher education in 2001. His work in urban and regional modeling set the agenda for the field in the 1970s. He now works on the evolution of cities and regions and his research has recently been supported by a £2.5M EPSRC grant to work on the ENFOLD-ing project for global dynamics.
Sir Alan Wilson’s research interests lie in mathematical modelling and the use of models in planning with respect to cities and regions – e.g. demography, economic input-output modelling, transport and locational structures.