Dr Oliver Crook has been announced as the winner of the 2023 Young Biometrician Award by the British and Irish Region of the International Biometric Society, jointly with the Fisher Memorial Trust. The award is made every two years to young biometricians (no more than 5 years since completing full-time education), who are members of the British and Irish Region of the International Biometric Society. The award recognises the research of one paper published, or accepted for publication, in a refereed journal. This award comprises a diploma and a prize of £1000.

Oliver is a Florence Nightingale Fellow (Senior Research Associate) in the Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, for his paper “Semi-Supervised Nonparametric Bayesian Modelling of Spatial Proteomics” (The Annals of Applied Statistics, 2022).

The panel felt that Oliver’s paper was extremely well written, with a clear description of an impressive technical analysis and implementation of complex stochastic modelling. The paper gave a clear, readable outline of the application area and spatial proteomics, and provided ample justification for the approach.  The modelling required was challenging, but Oliver’s dealt with each issue carefully and thoroughly and the end result was genuinely innovative and, ultimately, should prove useful to biologists – especially as software used in the paper has been included in an existing R package.