Biographical Sketch

Professor Geoff Nicholls, B.Sc. (Physics, Canterbury, New Zealand), MA, PhD (HEP, Cambridge, UK), teaches probability, statistics and applied mathematics. Geoff Nicholls joined the Statistics Department in 2005 from the Mathematics Department of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Geoff took his BSc at the Physics Department of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and his PhD at Clare College, Cambridge, where he studied particle physics in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.

Research Interests

Bayesian inference
Statistical methods
Computational statistics
Monte Carlo, statistical senetics
Applied statistics

Geoff is working on Monte-Carlo based Bayesian statistical inference for problems with computationally demanding prior and likelihood evaluations. Practical computational methods for making Bayesian model comparison for complex stochastic systems are needed. Research is driven by problems from a range of application areas, including Geoscience, Linguistics, Genetics and Archaeology.

Publications

Ewing, G., Nicholls, G. and Rodrigo, A. (2004) “Using temporally spaced sequences to simultaneously estimate migration rates, mutation rate and population sizes in measurably evolving populations.”, Genetics, 168(4), pp. 2407–2420.

Mira, A. and Nicholls, G. (2004) “Bridge estimation of the probability density at a point”, STATISTICA SINICA, 14(2), pp. 603–612.

Ewing, G., Nicholls, G. and Rodrigo, A. (2004) “Using temporally spaced sequences to simultaneously estimate migration rates, mutation rate and population sizes in measurably evolving populations”, GENETICS, 168(4), pp. 2407–2420.

Yang, Z., Stephens, D., Dawson, K., Drummond, A., Nicholls, G., Griffiths, R., Wilkinson-Herbots, H., Beaumont, M., Baird, S., Lascoux, M., Leblois, R., Estoup, A., Nielsen, R., Hey, J., Stumpf, M. and Wilkinson-Herbots, H. (2003) “Inferences from DNA data: population histories, evolutionary processes and forensic match probabilities - Discussion”, JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETY SERIES A-STATISTICS IN SOCIETY, 166, pp. 188–201.

Drummond, A., Nicholls, G., Rodrigo, A. and Solomon, W. (2002) “Estimating mutation parameters, population history and genealogy simultaneously from temporally spaced sequence data.”, Genetics, 161(3), pp. 1307–1320.

Jones, M. and Nicholls, G. (2002) “New Radiocarbon Calibration Software”, Radiocarbon, 44(3), pp. 663–674.

Holdaway, S., Fanning, P., Jones, M., Shiner, J., Witter, D. and Nicholls, G. (2002) “Variability in the chronology of Late Holocene Aboriginal occupation on the arid margin of Southeastern Australia”, JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE, 29(4), pp. 351–363.

Nicholls, G. and Jones, M. (2001) “Radiocarbon Dating with Temporal Order Constraints”, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C (Applied Statistics), 50(4), pp. 503–521.

Fox, C. and Nicholls, G. (2001) “Exact MAP states and expectations from perfect sampling: Greig, porteous and seheult revisited”, in AIP Conference Proceedings, pp. 252–263.

Jones, M. and Nicholls, G. (2001) “Reservoir Offset Models for Radiocarbon Calibration”, Radiocarbon, 43(1), pp. 119–124.