Dr Anthony J. Webster

Postdoctoral Researcher in Computational Statistics

About Me

I joined the Statistics Department in September 2023 to work with David Steinsaltz on the development of new methods to study patients with multiple long-term conditions (“multi-morbidity”). The topic is closely related to my recent fellowship work that explored new ways to characterise and classify diseases (CTSU, Oxford Population Health, 2019-22), that was funded by the Nuffield Department of Population Health (NDPH). The fellowship work aimed to develop novel but rigorous methods for big-data epidemiological studies.  

I originally trained in theoretical physics with a Ph.D. on the ageing and stability of emulsions and foams supervised by Prof. Mike Cates at the University of Edinburgh. I joined UKAEA at Culham Science Centre in September 2000, and spent 15 years as a theoretical physicist studying plasma stability in nuclear fusion experiments. Following an M.Sc. in Applied Statistics at the University of Oxford in 2016, I joined NDPH, and my research was predominately based within Oxford University's Big Data Institute until September 2023. In addition to my fellowship project, I have worked on cancer epidemiology (CEU, 2016-2019) and statistical genetics (GSK-funded, 2022-2023). 

Research Interests

My main research interests involve the development and use of novel mathematical methods to utilise the information in large epidemiological datasets. My work has aimed to combine the best existing epidemiological methods with modern clustering techniques and biologically-motivated mathematical models of disease. This has included extensive multi-stage modelling of disease using UK Biobank data (21st Armitage Workshop: Talk by Dr Anthony Webster), and pioneering the use of the Poisson-Binomial model to quantify how much disease-risk can be explained by old age and established risk factors. This latter work provides a first attempt to quantify how much prior diseases are increasing future disease-risk in the UK Biobank cohort, above what is expected based on age and well-known risk factors. My previous research has ranged from theoretical results in soft condensed matter and plasma physics, to cancer epidemiology and climate change. Broadly, my interests lie in the development and use of mathematical and statistical models for problems with social or public health value.

Publications

Webster, A. (2023) “How much disease risk is due to old age and established risk factors?”, PNAS Nexus, 2(9).
Webster, A. (2022) “Causal attribution fractions, and the attribution of smoking and BMI to the landscape of disease incidence in UK Biobank”, Scientific Reports, 12.
Webster, A. and Clarke, R. (2022) “Sporadic, late-onset, and multistage diseases”, PNAS Nexus, 1(3).
Webster, A. et al. (2021) “761Characterisation and clustering of diseases by their association with well-known risk factors”, International Journal of Epidemiology, 50(Supplement_1), p. dyab168.705.
Webster, A. et al. (2021) “Characterisation, identification, clustering, and classification of disease”, Scientific Reports, 11.
Webster, A. (2019) “Multi-stage models for the failure of complex systems, cascading disasters, and the onset of disease”, PLoS ONE, 14(5).
Webster, A. and Clarke, R. (2017) “Insurance companies should collect a carbon levy”, Nature, 549(7671), pp. 152–154.
Brezinsek, S. et al. (2016) “Characterisation of the deuterium recycling at the W divertor target plates in JET during steady-state plasma conditions and ELMs”, Physica Scripta, 2016(T167), p. 014076.
Webster, A. et al. (2015) “Resonant-like behaviour during edge-localised mode cycles in the Joint European Torus”, Physics of Plasmas, 22(8), p. 082501.
Giroud, C. et al. (2015) “Progress at JET in integrating ITER-relevant core and edge plasmas within the constraints of an ITER-like wall”, Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, 57(3), p. 035004.

Contact Details

Email: anthony.webster@stats.ox.ac.uk

Office: 1.11

Research Groups

Statistical Theory and Methodology

Statistical Genetics and Epidemiology