Vukutu has a team of experienced consultants and associates with expertise in business and strategic planning, project management, marketing strategy and planning, marketing research, simulation modeling, software development, multi-agent systems, e-commerce, and high-performance computer systems. Our key people are the following:
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Omar Baqueiro Espinosa has an Honours degree in Computational Systems Engineering from the Universidad Autonoma de BCS in Mexico, where he specialized in advanced software development. He has worked as the lead software developer for a start-up providing web-based applications, and also for the Mexican Oil Institute, implementing an intelligent agent-based supply chain management system and extending a neural network system. He has wide experience in the design and implementation of multi-agent software simulation models, particularly in financial and marketing domains. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Liverpool, UK, researching multi-agent option-trading mechanisms for market-based control of distributed computational systems. He is fluent in English and Spanish.
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Paul Hemming is an experienced management consultant in wireless communications and electronic commerce. He has been engaged in the IT and telecommunications industries for 20 years, and in management consulting since 1994. He specializes in the disciplines of business strategy development, market planning and business systems integration with a particular emphasis on start-up enterprises. He has extensive international business experience, having worked in more than 30 countries in North and South America, South East Asia and Western and Central Europe. He currently provides strategic marketing consulting services to for-profit and non-profit organizations operating in diverse marketplaces. Between 1994 and 2000, he was a Managing Partner and co-owner of Redwing Consulting, an international telecommunications consultancy, and then he held the position of Senior Vice President of the Mobile and Wireless Solutions Group of iXL, Inc. a US-based e-business integration company. He has a degree in Business Economics from the University of Hull, UK and a post-graduate diploma in Marketing.
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Peter McBurney, Vukutu's founder, has over two decades of experience in strategic market planning, marketing research and modelling, and agent-based simulation in Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia. He has a First Class Honours degree and a University Medal in Statistics from the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Liverpool, UK. McBurney was the co-ordinator of AgentLink III, a European Commission-funded network for agent-based computing, a network of over 200 research and commercial organizations. He was also a co-founder and principal of Redwing Consulting, a provider of decision support systems and services to telecommunications, IT and e-commerce companies world-wide. He began his consultancy career with BIS Macintosh, at the time the leading provider of marketing intelligence and consultancy to the IT and communications industry. He has led marketing consultancy and project management assignments for clients such as AT&T, AWA (Australia), British Telecommunications, Charoen Pokphand (Thailand), ICO Global, Inmarsat, Qualcomm, Reliance Industries (India), Sampoerna Telekom (Indonesia), SK Telecom (Korea), Sony, Teledesic, US West, Verizon, and the World Insurance Network (WIN).
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Jez McKean is an associate consultant with Vukutu. He has an Honours degree in Information Systems from the University of Liverpool, where he specialized in advanced web and internet technologies. After graduation, he worked as lead software developer for a start-up providing decision support systems for organizations managing their carbon emissions. Following this, he was employed as an applications developer for an internet services company, where he was engaged on web application development for a diverse range of manufacturing and service sector clients. He has considerable experience in designing and engineering multi-agent software simulation models in a variety of application domains, from the adoption of malaria treatments in African villages to the diffusion of enterprise software technologies among Fortune 500 companies.
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Jonathan Medley was born in Brazil and is fluent in English and Portuguese. He has an Honours degree in Computer Science from the University of Liverpool, UK, and, while there, held leadership positions in several student organizations. Working with SIFE, an organization devoted to encouraging entrepreneurship, he established a management consultancy business and a developing-world crafts trading business. In addition to information technology and data analysis skills, he has expertise in strategy and business planning, and has given lecture courses on marketing planning and entrepreneurship.
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Simon Parsons has a BA degree in Engineering from the University of Cambridge, an MSc in Computing Science from Imperial College, London, and a PhD in Computer Science from Queen Mary, University of London, UK. He is a specialist in modeling decision making under uncertainty and in developing computer models for strategic decision-making applications. He has considerable experience in the design and implementation of multi-agent computer systems, particularly for electronic marketplaces and online auctions. His work in this area has been recognized by his election as the co-Chair of the 2008 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2008), the leading event in the field. He has undertaken consultancy projects for major international technology companies, including British Telecommunications, Haliburton and Teledesic, advising on marketing strategy and strategic program planning. In 1998, he was awarded an Achievement Medal by the UK Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) (now the Institution of Engineering and Technology) for his research on intelligent computer systems.
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Dave Shuker has two decades of experience in the communications industry, and has worked on telecommunications projects in over 20 countries around the globe. He was previously the co-founder of Redwing Consulting, a global consultancy in the telecommunications industry, and head of the Wireless Consulting Group of iXL, a global e-business integration company based in the USA. He has advised and managed wireless startups throughout Asia and South America including Excelcomindo (Indonesia), TelecomAsia (Thailand), SK Telekom (South Korea), New World (Hong Kong), Sampoerna Telekom (Indonesia), Telefonica (Mexico), Smartcom (Chile) and Algar (Brazil). He has also worked with many blue chip companies in Europe and the USA including Verizon, AT&T, Cingular, O2 and Vodafone. His background is in business strategy, business planning, marketing and sales, and his experience also covers network project management, IT systems and vendor negotiations. Prior to founding his own consulting companies, he worked for Mercury One-2-One, the world’s first GSM-1800 operator, where he was responsible for strategic market planning. Before that, he worked with international strategy and research consulting firm Giga Corporation and Shell Oil. He has a BSc Hons (First Class) in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Warwick, UK.