Professor Anderson obtained his PhD in Statistics in 1971 from the University of London after studying Mathematics at Cambridge University (BA 1966) and Statistics at University College (MSc 1967) and Imperial College, London. He became a Chartered Statistician in 1993. He lectured at Birkbeck College, London before coming to Sheffield in 1974. His main research interests are in statistical and probabilistic modelling and inference, particularly in connection with environmental issues and extreme values, but he also works on problems in engineering and remote sensing. He chaired the Royal Statistical Society's Environmental Statistics Study Group from its foundation in 1996 until 2000, and he currently acts as one of the Society's media contacts on environmental matters. He is the joint author, with Professor R M Loynes, of a book on the teaching of practical statistics, and the joint editor, with Professors Barnett, Chatwin and El-Shaarawi, of a book on quantitative research on environmental matters.
Professor Applebaum graduated with an MA from the University of St Andrews in 1979. He obtained an MSc in mathematical physics from Nottingham University (1982) and a PhD there in quantum probability (1984), supervised by R L Hudson. After postdoctoral appointments in Rome, Nottingham and Bielefeld, he took a lectureship at Nottingham Trent University (then Trent Polytechnic) in 1987, becoming a Reader in 1994 and Professor in 1998, before moving to Sheffield in 2004. Professor Applebaum now works in stochastic processes. His main interests are in stochastic calculus and stochastic differential equations driven by processes with jumps, especially Levy processes.
Professor Biggins studied Mathematics at the University of Cambridge (BA 1973). The undergraduate degree was followed by an MSc (1974), with the main subject for this being Statistics, and a DPhil (1976), in Probability Theory; both postgraduate degrees are from the University of Oxford. He joined the staff at the University of Sheffield in 1976, and became a Professor in 1994. His main research interest is in applied probability, in particular branching processes and their applications (in biology, computer science, fractals, and non-linear differential equations), random walks and large deviation theory.
Prof Blackwell graduated with a BSc in Mathematics from Warwick University (1984). He has worked on forest growth models in the Statistics and Computing Department of the Forestry Commission Research Branch, and he obtained a PhD (1990) from Nottingham University. His main research interests are in Bayesian inference, stochastic processes, and ecological and environmental applications. Current work concerns computer-intensive methods of inference for stochastic processes.
Dr Buck graduated with a BSc in Archaeological Science from the University of Bradford in 1987. She then joined a collaborative team of archaeologists and statisticians at the University of Nottingham, working as a research assistant on a number of projects and completing a part-time PhD in statistics in 1994. Her PhD thesis title was: Towards Bayesian Archaeology. From Nottingham she moved to Cardiff to take up a post as Lecturer in Computing in the School of History and Archaeology (1994-2001). During that time, she continued her research interests in the application of statistics to archaeology, moving to Sheffield mid-2001. Current research interests focus on the development of formal tools for the construction of chronologies for archaeology and related disciplines.
Professor Cannings joined the Division of Genomic Medicine within the University's Medical School in August 1998, having been a member of this Department since 1971; he rejoined the department in 2008. He researches in mathematical biology, with emphasis on evolutionary aspects and including the theory of conflicts, population genetics and human genetics. Recent work has been in two main areas, conflict theory (patterns of evolutionarily stable strategies, the incorporation of spatial and temporal components into conflicts, multi-player conflicts, sperm competition, routes to polymorphism) and human genetics (Metropolis algorithms, pedigree analysis, modelling breast/ovarian cancer survival and diabetes in the Pima Indians).
Dr Fieller obtained his BA (1969) from the University of Cambridge, followed by an MSc (1970) from the University of Birmingham and PhD (1976) from the University of Hull. He is a Chartered Statistician, with considerable experience of consulting work. In particular he is consultant to the Egyptian Exploration Society, which has involved him in visits to archaeological sites in Egypt. He is a former Editor of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series D and current President of the British Classification Society. His research interests include: particle-size distributions; dendochronology; analysis of microarray data; linear functional models; problems involving 'outliers'; medical, environmental and archaeological applications of statistics.
Dr Grey joined the staff in 1972, having obtained a BA in Mathematics (1969) and a Diploma in Mathematical Statistics (1970) at Cambridge, and started work on an Oxford DPhil, which he completed at Sheffield (1974), in the field of branching processes. His research interest has continued in the area of branching processes but his theoretical studies have developed into other aspects of stochastic processes, including renewal theory, random walks and random difference equations. He has also worked on a number of problems in mathematical biology, including optimal harvesting, the evolution of genetic covariance and the stochastic corrector model.
Dr Jordan studied Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, obtaining a BA in 1998 and a Certificate of Advanced Study (Part III) in 1999. He started a PhD at Bristol, but transferred to Oxford in 2000, and obtained a DPhil in 2003, shortly after becoming a Lecturer in Sheffield. His research interests are in probability theory, in particular in the study of graphs associated with random fractals.
Prof Loynes graduated with a BA from the University of Cambridge in 1956, and then spent two years working in industry with Ferranti Ltd. He returned to academic life in 1958, taking the Diploma in Mathematical Statistics (1959), PhD (1963) and ScD (1981) also from Cambridge, and came to Sheffield in 1969. He has considerable experience of statistical consulting and is a Chartered Statistician. His current research interests are in linear and non-linear model building, especially when measurement errors or components of variance are present, and time series, as well as in less technical areas such as the teaching of practical and communication skills.
Dr Oakley obtained his BSc (1996) in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Nottingham, and his PhD (2000) in Statistics from the University of Sheffield. He has worked as a post- doctoral research associate in both the Department of Computer Science and Department of Probability and Statistics, University of Sheffield, before starting a lectureship in Probability and Statistics in 2002. He has various research interests in Bayesian inference including prior elicitation, Bayesian methods in health economics, and investigating uncertainty in complex computer models.
Professor O'Hagan obtained his BSc (1969) and PhD (1974) in Statistics from the University of London. Between these two bouts of study, he worked for two years as a practising statistician at the Central Electricity Generating Board. He began his academic career at the University of Dundee in 1973, moving to Warwick University in 1975. He became Professor of Statistics at the University of Nottingham in 1990 and moved to Sheffield in 1999. He has served on the Research Section Committee and the Council of the Royal Statistical Society and read four papers to meetings of the Society. He has been a member of the Peer Review College of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and chaired its Mathematics Programme Review Panel in 1998. His research is in the theory and applications of Bayesian statistics. On the methodological side, he has interests in model comparison, model uncertainty, conflicting information and inference about functions. He has been involved in numerous applications, particularly in environmental statistics and health economics, and is a Chartered Statistician. In 2000 he formed the Centre for Bayesian Statistics in Health Economics with colleagues in the School of Health and Related Research, and is the Centre's Director.
Dr Stillman took BSc and PhD degrees at Sheffield before taking up her lectureship in 1987. She has also been involved in both the local and national activities of the Royal Statistical Society and is a Chartered Statistician. Her main research interests lie in the practical application of statistics to geology and materials science. A long term concern has been the modelling of particle size, with investigations into its relationship with sediment transport processes and strength of composite materials. Other recent projects include the use of classification methods in pollen analysis, the design of resistant glazes and the production of computer-assisted-learning materials.
Dr Triantafyllopoulos obtained a PhD from Warwick University (2002) after completing a BSc in Mathematics at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1996) and a MSc in Quality Management at Napier University of Edinburgh (1998). After a post-doctoral appointment at Bristol University (2001-2002) he took a lectureship at Newcastle University (2002-2004). He moved to Sheffield in February 2005. His research interests are in Bayesian time series and forecasting. He is also interested in the use of time series for process improvement and the development and application of wavelet methods in statistics.
Dr Walters recently joined the department from the Mathematical Modelling and Genetic Epidemiology group in the Medical School. His modelling research focuses on developing stochastic models in order to better understand molecular processes. Recent work relates to modelling stem cell turnover in the colon.
Other people
There are several other people who are not members of the Department but who have strong links with it.
Emeritus Professor I R Dunsmore
Professor Dunsmore retired in 1998 but continued to work part-time in the Department until 2002. He came to Sheffield in 1973 and became a Professor in 1990. He has served on both the Council and the Executive Committee of the Royal Statistical Society, has been Honorary Secretary of its Research Section, and was also Joint Editor of Applied Statistics. He has been a member of the International Statistical Institute since 1987 and became a Chartered Statistician in 1993. His main research interests are in the field of prediction analysis from the Bayesian viewpoint and he is also interested in applications of statistics in medicine. Specific areas of interest include prediction in Poisson errors-in-variables models, the predictive influence of observations and missing data in logistic models, and treatment comparisons.
Professor Campbell is Professor of Medical Statistics in the Institute of General Practice and Primary Care. His interests are in epidemiological methods, follow-up surveys, medical time series and clinical trials.
Professor S Quegan
Professor Quegan, of the Applied Mathematics Department, is the Director of the Sheffield Centre for Earth Observation Science (SCEOS). The Centre is a highly successful interdisciplinary grouping of researchers from engineering, physics, mathematics, statistics, and the geographical and biological sciences who collaborate on the science, analysis and exploitation of data obtained from remote sensing of the Earth from satellites, airborne or ground based systems. Professor Quegan's personal research includes image processing, signal processing and scattering theory for synthetic aperture radar and in these he makes substantial use of statistical ideas. More generally Statistics is a key discipline in the work of SCEOS, and both Professor Anderson and Professor O'Hagan of Probability and Statistics play a prominent part in SCEOS activities.
Emeritus Professor A M Walker
Professor Walker, who retired in 1982, and whose main research area is time series, also continues his association with the Department.
