'<p class=bio><img src=/images/tools/speakers/atkinson.jpg width=100 align=left><b>Malcolm Atkinson</b> is Professor and leader of the Persistence and Distribution Group at the Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow.  His interest are in the Design, evaluation and implementation of database programming languages, persistent technology, object stores, type systems, bulk data types, data models, seamless and portable computing, and store measurement systems; development and evaluation of persistent programming methodologies and persistent application systems i.e., long lived (often distributed) information systems, especially health informatics examples; Design and implementation of autonomous zoned-systems that facilitate incremental change and of distributed real time systems that utilise dynamically updateable multicast groups.'