Biography: Tom Coates is a Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College London, working in algebraic geometry, scientific computation, and machine learning. He co-leads a research group that is building a Periodic Table for shapes, by combining new methods in geometry with cluster-scale computation, data mining, and machine learning. Tom has won numerous prizes and awards including the Philip Leverhulme Prize, the Whitehead Prize, and the Adams Prize. He is currently on part-time secondment to the Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser.