Peter Grindrod is a British mathematician. Career Grindrod was appointed a CBE in 2005 for services to mathematics R&D. He is a former member of the EPSRC Council (2000–04) and chair of the EPSRC's User Panel. He is a former president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the UK's professional and learned society for mathematicians (2006–08). He is also former member of BBSRC Council (2009–13). He is a former independent member of the MOD DSAC (2008– ). He was one of the founding directors (trustees) of the Alan Turing Institute, the UK's national centre for Data Science and AI. He is active in considering novel ways to achieve higher impact from the UK's research and development programmes and he has written recently on the intrinsic lack of risk-taking within public R&D funding, due to wrong-framing of proposed projects (as individual bets, all judged absolutely and seeking success, rather than as a portfolio of investments of very distinct types and distinct levels of risks and possible returns); and the dead hand of consensual peer-review processes, which results in only rather safe-science (de-risked) being funded and avoids any investments where there is controversy or a lack of a reviewer consensus (which could indicate disruptive opportunities outside of the present paradigm). He has recently applied such thinking to the MOD's AI programme, the UK's national AI strategy and portfolio, and the forthcoming UK ARIA. Grindrod began working in the theory and application of reaction diffusion equations. He obtained a degree in maths from the University of Bristol (1981) and a PhD from the University of Dundee (1983), after which followed a short period of post doctoral research in dynamical systems and nonlinear PDEs at Dundee. Between 1984 and 1989 he worked at the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, largely on both applications and modelling within physiology and biology. In 1989 he joined a commercial consulting company working in the environmental sciences, building up a mathematical modelling group on multidisciplinary projects in the UK, Europe, US and Japan. His research ranged from the application of fractals to simulating subsurface environments (micro medium structure controlling channelling flow and dispersion phenomena at the macroscopic scale), and non-linear multiphase (solutes, gases, and especially colloidal) dispersion processes, fully coupled chemical-temperature–hydration systems, through to the development of frameworks for estimating uncertainties within risk assessments, and the analysis of public risk perception. He has developed models