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Research

The Department of Statistics is a centre for research in Statistical Science, including methodological developments and probabilistic modelling, and their applications. It has distinguished individual researchers in addition to large and successful research groups in mathematical genetics and bioinformatics.

In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), 90% of research activity in Statistics at Oxford was judged to be 4* (world leading) or 3* (internationally excellent), the highest proportion of any UK university in the subject.  In the RAE in 2001, the Department achieved grade 5*, the highest grade.

Research activity spans a wide range of modern and exciting developments in the subject. Much of the research is either explicitly interdisciplinary, or draws its motivation from application areas, ranging from physics to the social sciences.

The main research interests fall into following categories:

•  Statistical genetics and bioinformatics
•  Applied probability
•  General statistics

As well as fundamental research in statistics and applied probability, there is much collaborative interdisciplinary research. Examples include:

Statistical Genetics
The largest and most successful study of the genetics of common human diseases, the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, was led from the Department by Professor Peter Donnelly with most of the methods development and analysis also in the Department. The Consortium’s work, and subsequent collaborations, have been responsible for over 50 novel disease associations.

The Department also has a major role in the 1,000 Genomes Project with Professor Gil McVean co-chairing the analysis group, in addition to the development of novel statistical methods and software that is now widely used in genetics.

R project
The R project is an international collaborative project that aims to provide a world-class environment for statistical computing, the development of new statistical methods and the graphical presentation of data. Professor Brian Ripley's group is one of the largest contributors to the project. Although originally developed for statistical research, R is now one of the most widely used of all statistical systems by researchers in many disciplines, and is close to universally used for teaching statistics at graduate level (and widely used for UGs). For just two examples, R has powered on-the-night election forecasting in the UK and in Austria, and much of the analysis of data from 'gene arrays' is done using R. It is also widely used in commercial settings, for instance in the pharmaceutical and financial industries, and for imaging.

Protein Informatics Group

The research interests of the Protein Informatics Group include protein structure prediction and protein interaction networks, combining both theoretical work and empirical analyses.

Protein1

The figure shows the major component of the protein interaction network used for calculating the network statistics. The left‐hand network is from H.pylori and the right‐hand network is from S.cerevisiae. The colour of vertices indicates their degree (number of neighbours), where, for example, green is for proteins with degree less than 20.

Further information:

List of academic staff
Recent Doctoral projects
List of possible research areas for doctoral study

Recent research:
DNA study reveals how bacteria evaded childhood vaccine


Research Groups:
Genome Analysis and Bioinformatics
Oxford Combinatorics
Oxford Protein informatics Group
Bacterial Analysis Group
Insurance and Poverty Group