Professor Kathy Kotiadis

Kathy Kotiadis is a Professor of Management Science/Operational Research and is an expert in developing quantitative and qualitative modelling approaches to support stakeholder engagement, primarily in Health Care.

Professor Kotiadis is the co-founder of PartiSim, which stands for Participatory Simulation, an approach to support stakeholder involvement in the discrete event simulation modelling process. 

Currently she is the co-director of the Centre for Advanced Diagnostic Development and Application (CADDA), which aims to bring together elements of diagnostics development by working in teams across disciplines in order to help deliver new diagnostics tools faster with the highest commitment to quality ethics and compliance.

Kathy's research centres on simulation methodology, including discrete-event and hybrid simulation, conceptual modelling, systems thinking, and problem structuring methods such as Soft Systems Methodology. She is especially focused on Operational Research (OR) methods that enhance stakeholder engagement in the modelling process.

Her research and consultancy span multiple sectors, including health and social care, local government, transport, and energy. Recent projects include work with HS1 Ltd (2024) and the North Kent Industrial Cluster (2025). 

Kathy has led or co-led research funded by EPSRC, Innovate UK, and Research England, and was awarded the prestigious Daphne Jackson (STEMM) Fellowship in 2014.

She is an active member of the research community, serving as a reviewer for major research councils and journals. She has been part of the EPSRC Peer Review College since 2016 and sits on EPSRC Maths prioritisation panels. 

Kathy is Co-Editor of the Health Systems journal, a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Simulation (since 2010), and a regular reviewer for journals such as EJOR,  JORS, Health Systems, and Operational Research in Healthcare. In recognition of her contributions, she was the recipient of the K.D. Tocher Medal for the Journal of Simulation in 2007–08.

Kathy has designed and delivered modules at undergraduate, postgraduate, and executive levels in Simulation, Statistics, Operational Research processes, Problem Structuring Methods, and Project Management. She has also taught on doctoral programmes including NATCOR (2021, 2023) and the EURO Behavioural OR school (Netherlands, 2019).    

Kathy welcomes PhD applications in areas including simulation modelling, facilitated OR approaches, healthcare or Industrial Symbiosis modelling and developing new methodologies in OR. 

Current Supervisees:

• Vivianne Horsti Dos Santos
• Zoe Horsham 
• Aaron Jackson

Past Supervisees:

• Jane S. Christie: The use of multimethodology in operational research practice supporting strategic decision-making: prevalence, methods, designs, and causal mechanisms (with Professor J. Mingers)
• Sheema Noorain: Towards Facilitated Optimisation (with Professor M.P. Scaparra)
• Tom Monks: Comparing model reuse with model building: an empirical study of learning from simulation (with Prof S. Robinson, 2011) 
• Stavrianna Dimitriou: The Impact of prices on boundedly rational decision makers in supply chains (with Prof S. Robinson, 2010)    

Kathy is a member of the OR Society’s Publications Committee (2019–2025) working with Taylor & Francis. She is also a founding member and ongoing committee member of Women in OR and Analytics (WORAN), supporting gender equity and visibility in the field.