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What's New

Announcement

Professor Bernard Silverman Is The New Home Office Chief Scientific Adviser

It was officially announced on 20 January 2010 that Professor Bernard Silverman had been appointed as the new Chief Scientific Adviser to the Home Office . 

More details are available on http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/32813

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Published Papers

Five members of the department: Simon Myers, Rory Bowden, Gil McVean, Peter Donnelly, and Afidalina Tumian, recently led a study explaining the phenomenon of "recombination hotspots" in the human genome, and their rapid evolution. The work was published in Science, on 31st December 2009.

Simon Myers, Rory Bowden, Afidalina Tumian, Ronald E. Bontrop, Colin Freeman, Tammie S. MacFie, Gil McVean, and Peter Donnelly "Drive Against Hotspot Motifs in Primates Implicates the PRDM9 Gene in Meiotic Recombination"

Science Express Reports, Published online December 31 2009; 10.1126/science.1182363

 

Dr Nicolai Meinshausen has recently co-authored two articles on climate change, which were the cover story of Nature on 30th April 2009.

Myles Allen, David Frame, Chris Huntingford, Chris Jones, Jason Lowe, Malte Meinshausen and Nicolai Meinshausen (2009).  Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne. Nature, 458, 1163-1166


Malte Meinshausen, Nicolai Meinshausen, William Hare, Sarah Raper, Katja Frieler, Reto Knutti, David Frame and Myles Allen (2009) Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2oC.  Nature, 458, 1158-1162

(Nature Editorial, News & Views) 

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RAE 2008: Oxford Statistics leads the field

In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) results released on 18 December, 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. Oxford Statistics also had the highest proportion of 4* world leading research (40%).

Head of Department, Professor Colin McDiarmid said:

"This is a great result for us. There are many strong Statistics departments in the country, so it is very pleasing that the RAE picks us out as the leading department, with such a high proportion of our research judged to be world leading or internationally excellent."

More information on RAE results can be found at http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2008/081217_1.html

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Announcements

The Department of Statistics is pleased to welcome Professor Steffen Lauritzen as the Head of Department.  Professor Lauritzen takes over the Headship on 1 April 2009 from Professor Colin McDiarmid.  We all look forward to working with Professor Lauritzen and wish him every success in this role.

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Professor Chris Holmes

Congratulations to Professor Chris Holmes who has been awarded the Royal Statistical Society Guy Medal in Bronze for 2009.

The citation for the Medal reads as follows:

“The Guy Medal in Bronze is awarded to Chris Holmes for his work in developing innovative statistical methods of analysis for many application driven problems and for advocating the use of statistical advances in fields of application. These include two papers in JRSS series B: Holmes & Mallick (2001) and Holmes & Adams (2002), and, more recently, innovative Bayesian model-based hierarchical clustering methods for gene-expression data – which have been applied to cell lines of the Anopholes mosquito – a major vector of malaria. He has also conducted groundbreaking work on methodology for inhomogenous random fields; developed new methods for modelling geological thermal histories and introduced Bayesian mixture models into geochronology.”

The medal will be awarded at an awards ceremony on 24 June.

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Professor Tom A B Snijders

A Belgian Francqui Chair 2008-2009 has been awarded to Prof. dr. Tom A.B. Snijders. This is an honorary chair at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). The topic of this Francqui chair is "Statistical Models for Social Network Data". The chair will comprise an inauguration and a lecture series. The inaugural lecture will take place on February 16, 2009 in the University Hall of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

http://ppw.kuleuven.be/francqui/

Professor Gesine Reinert

The third Journal of Peace Research Article of the Year Award goes to a paper co-authored by  Neil F. Johnson, Michael Spagat, Sean Gourley, Jukka-Pekka Onnela & Gesine Reinert, on 'Bias in Epidemiological Studies of Conflict Mortality http://jpr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/45/5/653', Journal of Peace Research 45(5): 653-663.

This paper provides a framework of how to assess bias in epidemiological studies which may arise when the sampling procedure is not sufficiently sensitive to the structural heterogeneity of the system and the internal diffusion within the system. The approach is applied to a recent survey of conflict mortality in Iraq; such bias may arise in a cluster sampling procedures which picks clusters from residential streets which are required to cross main streets. The main point is illustrated in the attached figure.

For more details see : http://www.prio.no/Research-and-Publications/Journal-of-Peace-Research/Article-of-the-year/

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Professor Steffen Lauritzen

Aalborg University, Denmark has awarded Professor Steffen Lauritzen an Honorary Doctorate - doctor scientarum honoris causa - to be formally received at a ceremony in Aalborg on 31 October this year

Foreign Member to the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters 2008

Congratulations to Professor Steffen Lauritzen on becoming a Foreign Member to the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters 2008

 

Professor Peter Donnelly FRS

Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences

Professor Peter Donnelly FRS has been elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences for outstanding contributions to the advancement of medical science, for innovative application of scientific knowledge and conspicuous service to healthcare.

Professor Donnelly is Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, and is a member of the Department of Statistics.

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The WTCC paper has recently won a number of awards from various papers (see links below) and is just about to be named as the Lancet's paper of the year for 2007.

Scientific American has named the WTCCC as its research leader of the
year. 

The paper was also one of the "Nature editor's picks"

Science also picked this area as its major breakthrough for 2007. 

And we were first and second in the American Heart Association's list of
achievements for the year.

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Disease Genes Discovered

Oxford Statisticians are involved in the largest ever study of genetics of common diseases. The project is chaired by Professor Peter Donnelly. Other members of the department involved include Dr Jonathan Marchini and Dr Chris Spencer.

These external sites have more details:
http://www.wtccc.org.uk/info/070606.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6724369.stm
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v447/n7145/full/nature05911.html