Association Schemes: Designed Experiments, Algebra and Combinatorics

R. A. Bailey has been Professor of Statistics at Queen Mary, University of London since 1994. Currently she is also head of the School of Mathematical Sciences. After doing a DPhil in group theory at Oxford she worked in the Mathematics Faculty of the Open University then took a post-doctoral research fellowship in Statistics at Edinburgh University. Since then her main research interest has been in the design of experiments. She spent 10 years in the Statistics Department of Rothamsted Experimental Station (now the BBSRC Institute of Arable Crops Research) before coming to the University of London as Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Goldsmiths' College. Along the way she was a school teacher for one year and a technician in medical research for another. She has also held short-term appointments at the Universities of Western Australia, Sydney (Australia), and North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA). She has been a frequent visitor to the Unit\'e de Biom\'etrie in the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique at Versailles (France), and has given short courses on Statistics in Finland, Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Augsburg (Germany). Her interests span statistics and pure mathematics, and the importance of both to scientists and to ordinary people. She has served the London Mathematical Society as Meetings and Membership Secretary, Vice President and member of the Personnel and Office Committee. She was a member of the British Combinatorial Committee when it established its current successful format for conferences. She was secretary of the UK \TeX\ Users' Group for four years. She is a member of the Council of the International Biometric Society, being president of the British Region 2000-2002. She is a member of the Research Section of the Royal Statistical Society. She is also a member of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the International Statistical Institute. She represented the Committee of Professors of Statistics first on the Higher Educatio